The East Side Freedom Library invites you to the October session of our Labor History Reading Group

Immigration, Ethnicity, Race, and Class: The Growing Puerto Rican Presence in Central Pennsylvania

Tuesday, October 20, 2020, 7PM

This meeting will be on Zoom. You must register here to participate. 

The Pandemic-related crisis in the meatpacking industry has raised our awareness of the presence of immigrant workers in smaller communities around the state. How has their presence changed our sense of the Minnesota working class? How has their presence changed the labor movement? What can we learn from studies of the experiences of immigrants of color in other states? Join John Hinshaw, a Professor of History at Lebanon Valley College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for an investigation of the Puerto Rican presence in central Pennsylvania. John is a graduate of Macalester College and the author of Steel and Steelworkers: Race and Class Struggle in 20th Century Pittsburgh (2002).

With Professor Ivette Guzman-Zavala, John created an exhibit, “Dutchirican: A Latinx History of Central Pennsylvania,” which he has invited us to tour virtually. John has also invited us to read his essay, “Dutchirican: The Growing Puerto Rican Presence in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country,” which appeared in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography in 2016. Please email [email protected] to receive an electronic copy of John’s essay.

Although Pennsylvania is the state with the fourth-largest population of Puerto Ricans, their history, particularly outside of Philadelphia, has received little attention. Puerto Ricans began to settle in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country due in part to farmers’ demands for labor in the 1940s and 1950s. Puerto Ricans moved to the area for reasons of their own, seeing the region as a place to pursue their economic progress and religious expression. Since the 1980s, the growth of the community has been rapid, chiefly as Puerto Ricans have moved away from expensive housing in the New York metropolitan area.

Each month, ESFL hosts a Labor History Reading Group conversation, featuring the author of the article that we are reading. We select topics that connect the past and the present and provide us with opportunities to see how the field of labor history is continuing to evolve.

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