“Primary sources are first hand evidence and artifacts of the past. They may include letters, photographs, maps, government documents, diaries, oral accounts, pamphlets, or leaflets. Some may be published, others not. Read attentively, they can give us multiple perspectives on history and open up a vast array of issues and concerns.”                              Learner.org

Primary sources provide alternative perspectives on historical experiences and events, particularly for groups who remain invisible in traditional and commercial texts and textbooks. A part of El Centro’s collection, the Jesus Colón archives, are a valuable record of the day-to-day experiences of Puerto Rican migrants in New York City during the decades prior to the 1950's. The Jesus Colón archives are also a major source of information on this little known but significant writer. Review of excerpts to illustrate how primary documents (e.g., letters, published books reviews, academic references, and flyers) were used to create a biography of Jesus Colón that highlights his multifaceted personality and interests, when he wrote and what he wrote about.

Jesus Colón’s letters to his wife, to his friends, and those he has yet to meet bring us close to who he was and provide a commentary on this times:

“My name is Jesus Colón. I came to New York as a stow-away 47 years ago. Graduated in 1922 from Brooklyn Boys High, evening. Studied law at St. Johns University. All these years I have been active among my fellow Puerto Ricans, including candidacy for State Senate and City Council.”

Letter to principals promoting his book, A Puerto Rican in New York.

“…. Only to explain the importance of Negro-Puerto Rican understanding, cooperation and working together in action and struggle in the mutual problems that affects us, will take a long newspaper article. So today, I just want to ask for your photograph for my private Hall of Fame. I can visualize exactly where I am going to place your picture. I will place it at the very middle of the staircase wall leading to my room. Some nights or early morning I come in very tired. At that moment I need help…I would like to see you right at that point. I want you there to smile at me with that half smile of yours, so warm, so human…And I tired but happy will go into a slumber and then a sure and confident sleep. Because I know that there shall be a tomorrow with you right there in the middle of it all fighting for peace and equal right for all.”

Draft Letter to Paul Robeson

“Puerto Ricans are everywhere in New York. Before you left you had noticed this phenomena. But now it has increased. I think there isn’t a neighborhood or district, no matter how far from Harlem, where there are no Puerto Ricans. The poor things are living one on top of the other. It’s pitiful because they can’t find where to live. I don’t know what they’ll do when they come during the winter. We’ll see.” (translation)

Original: “Esta el puertorriqueno, “hosco” en Nueva York. Antes de tu salir, ya tu te habias dado cuenta del fenomeno. Pero ahora es mucho mas acentuado. Creo que no hay barrio ni distrito por lejos que sea de Harlem en donde no hayan boricuas viviendo. Estan, los pobres, viviendo los unos sobre los otros. Da pena, pues no encuentran en donde vivir. Yo no se lo que haran los que vengan durante el invierno. Alla veremos.”

October 8, 1948, letter to his wife Concha recuperating in PR

“I would like to know how you spend your time after your responsibilities at the university are done. Don’t let your gray matter get rusty; well we always await your return to the hearth and your involvement in the “Colónias’” civic activities. The Colónia needs and expects much of you.” (translation)

Original: “Me gustaria saber en que te ocupas despues de tus labores universitarias. No dejes que se te enmohesca la material gris; pues siempre esperamos que tu regreses a nuestro seno y te envuelvas en las actividades civicas de la Colónia. La Colónia te necesita y espera mucho de ti.”

July 8, 1948 letter to Prof. Guillermo Cotto-Thorner, an old friend living in Storr, CT

“Aqui en los estados a veces se pasa una vida de perros. Digamelo a mi que a pasado por la seca y la meca como decimos por alla, que he estado en las etapas mas bajas hasta las mas alta que un joven de mi educacion y mi posicion social puede conseguir en este pais. Mas todos estos trabajos han servido solamente para modelar mi caracter e ir formandome digno de llamarme hombre. Infelices a los que pasan por todas estas etapas evolutivas y no sacan productos de ellas! Hay algunos que nunca despiertan y son condenados por su misma inercia y embrutecimiento causado quizas por el medio ambiente a que se acostumbran a vivir, a morir como siempre vivieron en este pais. Yo tuve una epoca de estas pero supe sacudirme a tiempo y dedicarme a una vida que en el manana de fructifera ideas y bienes materiales abriendome asi el camino hacia la felicidad. Con la ayuda de me madre y mi familia por un lado o sea por el lado del amor maternal y familiar y por otro ayudado por esa fuerza potentisima y firm que se llama amor por el amor mismo y el cual ud. como virgen candorosa de mi espiritu ha sabido tan bien hacerme sentir, igualando a mi madre con la ayuda de esas dos fuentes de felicidad estoy seguro que sabre seguir adelante por encima de todas las dificultades.”

From a letter to his wife, Concha, while she was recuperating in Puerto Rico.

 

Academic papers and reviews provide other perspectives on the writer and his times.

“In the United States, his occupation ranged from dousing bottles in cold water and scraping the labels off with his thumbnails so they could be resold, to that of a night porter in the subways, dishwasher, dock worker,
post-office clerk and labor organizer, but never that of a Reader in a factory. Yet, “El Lector” is what he has really become, in a broader sense… (W)hat he has to say makes better people of his readers. Just as what “El Lector” read had to carry a ring of truth…so it was with Colón’s sketches and essays.”

Sidney Finkelstein’s review of A Puerto Rican in New York appearing in Political Affairs, p. 63.

“… Jesus Colón’s book, “A Puerto Rican in New York and other sketches first chronicled the unseen lives, daily lives and dramas and disenchantments of an earlier (1920s-40s) generation of immigrants. Not incidentally, he also inaugurated a distinctively inflected, culturally syncretic, English language mainland branch of Puerto Rican letters.”

In Roberto Marquez book review in the New York Times, n.d.

“The book is a group of excellent sketches with irony, bitter humor and incisive criticism in which the author gives his views on the anguish, psychology, intelligence and aspirations of the Puerto Ricans. There are autobiographical sketches with childhood recollections, and in some the author speaks of his struggles in the skyscraper city. His voice is one of protest against all forms of discrimination and exploitation to which our people, the Puerto Ricans have been subjected. But the book is an affirmative one: it is an expression of deep faith in human, moral values."

Jose Ferrer-Canales review in Current Literature, The Journal of Negro Education, XXXII (2):155-157).

“One of the beauties of his writing is that it is pervaded with the warm tones of a gentle, persuasive speaking voice. What he has to say is addressed of course not to the working people alone, nor to the Puerto Rican people alone, but to the American people as a whole.”

Sidney Finkelstein in "Political Affairs", p. 64

“Mr. Colón is a writer, teacher and lecturer well known throughout New York City as a leader of minority groups. Out of his own fight to earn a living and get an education came his determination to fight for a better school for ALL people… Today he speaks and writes tirelessly for better housing, fair labor legislation, and more schools.”

American Labor Party flyer supporting Colón’s candidacy for office: Meet Two of Your Neighbors

Primary documents such as photographs and maps that appear in the PowerPoint presentation provide more windows from which to make sense of Jesus Colón in his historical context.

Web-Based Assignment
Review the following websites and prepare a summary chart to compare/contrast the multimedia technologies used to present information on reading and interpreting primary documents.

1. Annenberg/CPB
   
2. History Matters. Making Sense of Evidence: Letters and documents
   by Steven Stowe (PDF file); making sense of photographs, Frank Goodyear.