UPenn Daniel Morarles Armstrong - Black Puerto Rican History continued from page 5

With the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico approaching on March 22, now is an important time to revisit the stories of emancipated Black Puerto Ricans, Morales-Armstrong says.

He expects to find more concentrated collections about the reaction to abolition in the archives of Puerto Rico and has been surprised at how the past five centuries of colonialism have impacted the mechanics of doing his research.

“There are times when I get to an archive and the catalog says that what I’m looking for is in this box, and I get to that box and there will be a gap. The documents are taken out, and there’s no forwarding address. The archivist will tell you, ‘Oh, yes. These documents are probably in Spain.’ But it’s not clear where.”

He gives an example of searching a regional archive for records of the police who went to quell public disturbances and who would have likely been called in to address any resistance to labor contracting.

“The Spanish administrators in Puerto Rico loved to write detailed documents patting themselves on the back; the public order police at the time wrote in depth weekly updates on their activities in the Ponce area,” he says. “In the Spanish archive to which the documents I was looking for were extracted, I found two years of weekly documents turned into a three-page summary saying, ‘We did a really great job during this time, and we had no issues.’ Something’s up there. It’s revisionist history at the colonial level,” Morales-Armstrong says.

On the left is Maria Josefa’s birth certificate, and on the right is the labor contract the man who previously enslaved her drafted when she was free.

Image: Courtesy of Daniel Morales-Armstrong

As a result, he says, he’s been forced to be more creative in his research in order to work around these gaps in information.

“Emancipation in Puerto Rico is an important but understudied topic,” Morales-Armstrong says. “The stories of free people’s agency in that moment of emancipation were very clearly silenced by the Spanish empire and the British empire at the time, and those in official roles had an intentional hand in silencing the stories.”

Understanding, researching, and revisiting the story of emancipation in Puerto Rico is crucial because the current history leaves questions for Black Puerto Rican people interested in learning about the past, Morales-Armstrong says. He hopes other Black Puerto Rican people take up the study of the island’s history to help continue to fill in the gaps created by colonialism.

Morales-Armstrong’s advisor Grace Sanders Johnson, an assistant professor in Africana studies, says he is an exemplary emerging scholar.

“Of course, his academic work is intellectually rigorous, but I most impressed with Daniel’s intentionality to build systems of learning and engagement for future communities and scholars,” she says. “His work, then, encompasses a particular kind of thoughtfulness that advances the historical understanding of Black Puerto Ricans and also functions as an invitation to create archives for future scholars.”

Another advisor, Roquinaldo Ferreira, agrees.

“Daniel combines an incredible worth ethic with great intellectual creativity,” he says.

Morales-Armstrong says it is important to recognize that Black history is multifaceted and there is value in learning about Black history across the diaspora, be it in Puerto Rico, in the United States, in Mexico, or in Jamaica.

“Though iterations of Black History Month now exist throughout the hemisphere, the origin of the celebration as we know it is from the U.S., started by African-American historian Carter G. Woodson,” MoralesArmstrong says. “When we think about Black history, we need to look at African-American history here, Black history in the global African diaspora— like my work in Puerto Rico—and across the African continent. In this regard, it becomes clear that if we are to know and honor Black history, we are necessarily called to do this work well beyond the month we are in.”