Afro–Puerto Ricans and the Tuskegee Experience

The first Puerto Rican students arrived at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute between 1898 and 1915. The institute emerged as a space where the students participated in a process of cultural exchange. The United States’ intervention in Puerto Rico offered Afro–Puerto Ricans opportunities that were denied them under the Spanish caste system. Tuskegee’s principal, Booker T. Washington, believed that he had a solution to Puerto Rico’s “race problem,” and that solution continued to inspire others long after Washington’s death in 1915. At Tuskegee, Afro–Puerto Rican and African American students learned from, and clashed with, each other and formed new identities. Through the analysis of letters, memoranda, and other correspondence written by Washington and other Tuskegee administrators, as well as by students and government agencies, this article explores the students’ complex relationships with imperialism and how they confronted their Blackness, adding a complex dimension to the examination of Pan-African relationships between Tuskegee Institute and Latin America

Caste · Government (linguistics · Intervention (counseling · Latin Americans · Puerto rican · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Race, History, and American Society

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