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Latino Migration and the New Global Cities: Transnationalism, Race, and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000

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Latino Migration and the New Global Cities: Transnationalism, Race, and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000 Latino Migration and the New Global Cities: Transnationalism, Race, and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000 Author: Llana Marie Barber Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1388 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2010 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of History LATINO MIGRATION AND THE NEW GLOBAL CITIES: TRANSNATIONALISM, RACE, AND URBAN CRISIS IN LAWRENCE, MASSACHUSETTS, 1945-2000 a dissertation by LLANA BARBER submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2010 © Copyright by LLANA BARBER 2010 Latino Migration and the New Global Cities: Transnationalism, Race, and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000 Llana Barber Advisors: Marilynn Johnson and Davarian Baldwin Drawing on urban history methodologies that re-frame “white flight” as a racialized struggle over metropolitan space and resources, this dissertation examines the transition of Lawrence, Massachusetts to New England’s first Latino-majority city between 1945 and 2000. Although the population of this small, struggling mill city has never exceeded 100,000, it is not unique in its changing demographics; low-tier cities have become important nodal points in transnational networks in recent decades, as racialized patterns of urban disinvestment and gentrification encouraged a growing dispersal of Latinos from large cities like New York. While Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans gradually began to arrive in Lawrence in the 1960s, tens of thousands of white residents were already leaving the city, moving (along with Lawrence’s industrial and retail establishments) out to the suburbs. As a result of this flight, the city was suffering from substantial economic decline by the time Latino settlement accelerated in the 1980s. Not all of Lawrence’s white population fled, however. Instead, many white Lawrencians fought to maintain control in the city and to discourage Latino settlement. I focus on two nights of rioting between white and Latino residents in 1984, as a spectacular example of the racialized contestations that accompanied the city’s social and economic transformations. Although the political power and public presence of Latinos dramatically increased in the years after the riots, half a century of uneven metropolitan development had left Lawrence without the resources or political clout to successfully confront the city’s pervasive poverty. Lawrence’s history demonstrates the expansion of urban crisis during the 1980s, and its impact on Latino communities in the Northeast. The building of a Latino majority in Lawrence was not simply a demographic shift; rather it was an uphill struggle against a devastated economy and a resistant white population. The transformation of Lawrence in spite of these obstacles highlights the energy and commitment that Latinos have brought to U.S. cities in crisis during the second half of the twentieth century. Table of Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction – Latinos in the Postindustrial City 1 Chapter One – Suburban Growth and the Origins of Lawrence’s 36 Urban Crisis, 1945-1980 Chapter Two – “Why Lawrence?”: How Urban Crisis Shaped Latino 76 Migration Chapter Three – Prelude to the Riot: Early Latino Activism and 148 White Resistance Chapter Four – Race and Public Space in the Immigrant City: The 190 Riots of 1984 Chapter Five – Claiming and Disclaiming the 1984 Riots 242 Chapter Six – After the Riots: Latino Inclusion into a Failing City, 317 1984-2000 Conclusion –Transnational Lawrence and the New Global Cities 381 Bibliography 407 v Abbreviations AH – Armand Hyatt (personal collection) JFB – John F. Buckley (archived collection at the Lawrence History Center) LDIC – Lawrence Development and Industrial Commission LPLA – Lawrence Public Library Archives LHC – Lawrence History Center MA – Massachusetts State Archives MCAD – Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology SLoM – State Library of Massachusetts VTNA – Vanderbilt Television News Archive vi Acknowledgements I must begin by thanking my dissertation advisors, Marilynn Johnson and Davarian Baldwin. Both model scholars, they each brought a unique set of strengths and skills to advising me on this project, and I shudder to imagine what this dissertation would have looked like without their brilliant insights and their wise, patient criticism. A heartfelt thanks to Cynthia Young, as well, for her careful reading and challenging questions, and for her early efforts to help me think through transnationalism in the context of global racial and imperial hierarchies. I’d also like to thank Deborah Levenson who oversaw an initial foray into this research in an independent study and helped me to clarify what aspects of Lawrence’s history I wanted (and would have the means) to investigate. The History Department and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Boston College have been wonderfully supportive throughout my graduate career, both logistically and financially, and I am particularly grateful for a research year through the Presidential Fellowship in my fifth year of graduate study. This dissertation was completed thanks to the financial support of a Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women, and I imagine that its completion would still loom far in the future were it not for the AAUW’s timely funding. During the course of my research, Barbara Brown and Amita Kiley at the Lawrence History Center were incredibly helpful, pulling together a wealth of material and even helping me access it long-distance while I was pregnant and then caring for a young infant. I will be forever grateful for the newspaper clipping I desperately needed, which they tracked down, scanned, and email to me within moments, all with the utmost vii good humor. I am grateful as well to Louise Sandberg, head of Special Collections at the Lawrence Public Library for her keen knowledge of Lawrence’s past and for sharing the eclectic archive assembled there. Thanks, too, to William Maloney and the staff of the Lawrence City Clerk’s office, as well as Jennifer Fauxsmith and the staff at the Massachusetts Archives, and at Special Collections in the Massachusetts State Library. I am also grateful for the material sent electronically by Joan Keegan from the AT&T Archives and History Center. Thanks to Lorlene Hoyt at MIT for providing transcripts from the Forgotten Cities seminar series, and to Ramón Borges-Méndez for allowing me to quote from his presentation in that series. Most importantly, I would like to thank the individuals who bravely shared their opinions on Lawrence’s history in the form of oral history interviews: Isabel Meléndez, Jorge Santiago, Ingrid Garcia, Eric Spindler, and Armand Hyatt. Armand Hyatt is due particular thanks for generously lending me his personal collection of documents regarding the Immigrant City Community Housing Corporation and the origins of Lawrence Community Works (and giving me a rambunctious “guided tour” through this extensive personal archive). In spite of such wonderful contributions and such astute guidance, errors undoubtedly remain in this dissertation, for which I am, of course, solely responsible. I also feel compelled to express gratitude to the ground-breaking researchers whose work has focused on Lawrence in the recent decades. Postwar Lawrence was off the scholarly radar for a long time, but a number of researchers have insisted in recent years that Lawrence has much to teach us about the contemporary world and the forces that have shaped it. Although I have only had the privilege to speak with a few of these viii scholars directly, thanks go to Ramón Borges-Méndez, Jorge Santiago, James Jennings, Ramona Hernández, William Lindeke, Jeff Gerson, Glenn Jacobs (and others I have surely overlooked), as well as the students and faculty from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT who have pioneered a model of engaged scholarship in the MIT@Lawrence Project. Taken together, the work of these researchers and the tireless work of the Lawrence Public Library and the Lawrence History Center have enabled the preservation of an archive of Lawrence’s recent history, without which my own work would have been impossible. There is no way to sufficiently convey my gratitude to Eric Spindler and the Spinder/Deschamps family, who first introduced me to Lawrence and shared with me both their love of the city and their outrage at its myriad injustices. The views in this dissertation have been immeasurably shaped by long conversations, and long walks and drives through the city, particularly with Eric. I regret that one of his major concerns ended up beyond the purview of this project: the particular place of those who were “half and half” in the city’s often dichotomous racial hierarchy, the children of those pioneers in Lawrence who loved and created families across the boundaries of race and ethnicity. Let his concerns be a challenge throughout this dissertation to any essentializing tendencies in my discussion of the conflict between white and Latino residents in the city. My family has been an essential source of support throughout this project. Thanks to my sisters, Stephanie Barber and Cate Barber Moran for their unflagging belief in their baby sister’s smartness. My parents, John and Eileen Barber, and my parents-in-law, Hok and Kim Heng, have provided countless hours of childcare in addition to massive ix encouragement and understanding. I am amazed by this support and I literally don’t know what I would have done without it. Finally, I must thank my husband, Chiv Heng, and my two sons, Cadence and Noah, for their immense love, and for taking me at my word that I was actually working when I sat in my pajamas in front of my computer for a year and a half. What a beautiful, loving leap of faith that was! My greatest success would be if one day this dissertation convinced them that the moments I stole away from our time together were given to a worthy project.
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