“Little Things Are Big”: Race and the Politics of Print Community in the Writings of Jesús Colón

Over the past twenty-five years, new scholarship on black radicalism has deeply transformed our understanding of the history, tensions, and ideological complexities of black political groups and the cultural and political practices of black activists, artists, and intellectuals in the United States. Black radicalism has become “a quickly shifting object of study,” in the words of Brent Hayes Edwards, as scholars redefine its parameters, reconsider conventional narratives about well-known black radical figures, and add lesser-known figures to the mix (“Introduction” 2). Emerging work, for example, on lesser-known figures such as Claudia Jones and Alice Childress and new studies of more canonical figures such as Richard Wright, Marcus Garvey, C. L. R. James, and Claude McKay have broadened the lines of inquiry on black radicalism. Additionally, scholars have turned their attention more fully to the complex relationship between black nationalism and Left politics, issues of gender and sexuality in black radical movements, and transnational black radicalisms. Groundbreaking studies of the inter-nationalist dimensions of black radicalism by Edwards (Practice), Kate A. Baldwin, Michelle Ann Stephens, William J. Maxwell, and many others have been particularly prominent over the past decade or so.¹ Despite this welcomed expansion of the field, however, there remains a blind spot when it comes to the role of Afro-Latina/os in twentieth-century black radicalism in the United States.²

Arthur Schomburg is one of the only Afro-Latina/os of any period whose life and work has been understood in the context of black radicalism, and that is because he is considered an exception to the rule that Puerto Ricans have not played a role in black radical politics in the United States.³ Because Schomburg lived most of his adult life in primarily African American neighborhoods, married African American women, belonged to organizations comprising mainly African American and West Indian members, and changed his name from Arturo to Arthur, scholars tend to marginalize his Puerto Rican background, making it easier for them to consider him within the context of black radicalism. This characterization overlooks the fact that his work as a popular historian and archivist emphasized the international history of Afro-Latina/os and ignores Schomburg’s culturally, linguistically, and geographically inclusive theories of the African diaspora.⁴

This essay takes a step toward closing these gaps in the scholarship on black radicalism by examining the published writings of the black Puerto Rican communist Jesús Colón. I also hope to encourage an expansion and rethinking of the term black radicalism itself. Colón, a friend and compatriot of Schomburg, also migrated from Puerto Rico to New York as a young man and has long been recognized in the field of Puerto Rican Studies as one of the most important radical writers and activists among Puerto Ricans in the mainland United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Some have referred to Colón, along with his friend Bernardo Vega, as “Proto-Nuyorican” because the writings of both men, in the words of Frances R. Aparicio, “anticipate the perspectives of . . . the Nuyorican movement, a movement that was very much informed by the experiences of the Puerto Rican proletariat in the United States” (25). While Colón’s significance has been recognized in the field of Puerto Rican Studies, as well as in a few recent articles by scholars in related fields, there nonetheless remains a surprising lack of critical scholarship on his writings.⁵

More specific to my concerns here, Colón’s writings and political efforts have yet to be sufficiently understood within the context of the black radical tradition, even though he wrote and organized against imperialism, racism, and class exploitation from his youth until his death in 1974. In part, this is because of the challenge to conventional understandings of black radicalism posed by Colón’s complex political and cultural affiliations, which centered on the Puerto Rican community but also extended more broadly to a multi-ethnic community of workers and socialists. Winston James raises this very concern...