March 24, 2025

Ruth Reynolds & Puerto Rican Independence

Ruth Reynolds, born in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1916 to a strict Methodist family, may have seemed an unlikely ally to the cause of Puerto Rican independence, but she devoted her life to what she saw as her “sacred and patriotic duty” as an American to convincing her country to withdraw from Puerto Rico “so that our nation may stand before the world free from any suggestion of imperialist ambition.” Facing surveillance by the FBI and insular police and even incarceration for her views, Reynolds never backed down from her solidarity, but she was always careful to listen to the people of Puerto Rico and never to impose her view on them. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Lisa G. Materson, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico's Independence

 

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is the original mid-19th century fast-tempo arrangement of “La Borinqueña,” which later as a slower arrangement became the regional anthem of Puerto Rico; the performance is by the United States Navy and is in the public domain; it is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is from the arrest of Carmen María Pérez González, Olga Viscal and  Ruth Reynolds, January 4, 1951, taken by Benjamin Torres, and archived at the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad de Puerto Rico; the photograph is in the public domain.

 

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Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. Ruth Mary Reynolds was born in Terraville, South Dakota, in the Black Hills near Deadwood on February 29, 1916, to Harry and Margaret Reynolds. Ruth and her sisters, Helen and Jean, were brought up in a strict Methodist faith that included traditional gender roles and prohibitions against such things as public dancing. A youth group minister, though, instilled in Ruth a belief in social gospel Methodism, one where social justice work and pacifism were the most important tenets of her faith. When Ruth was 11 years old, President Calvin Coolidge came to the Black Hills, and he was ceremonially inducted into the Lakota Nation. Ruth met one of the Lakota who had led the induction ceremony, Yellow Robe, who helped introduce her to ideas of injustice in the United States, as she learned that the land she lived on had been stolen from his family by the US government. In 1933, Ruth Reynolds went to college at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, South Dakota, 300 miles from her home, at a time when only 10 to 12% of women attended university at all. Reynolds, then president of the Women's Self Government Association, headed a group of students who successfully demanded an investigation into the firing of several professors. The university president resigned over the episode, but he warned a school district against hiring Reynolds, calling her an agitator. As a result, the only position she could find after graduating was teaching on the Lakota Rosebud Reservation in South Central South Dakota, 200 miles from Terraville. Although she only stayed there for a year, her time at Rosebud further opened Reynolds' eyes to the injustice faced by Native Americans. In 1938, Reynolds began a master's degree in English Literature at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. While there, she also became involved in the pacifist movement, joining the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international Christian pacifist organization founded during World War I. When she couldn't find a job in Chicago after the completion of her master's degree, Reynolds applied to a Fellowship of Reconciliation workshop at the Harlem Ashram on the topic of, "Total Pacifism." Reynolds began living at the ashram, eventually becoming an assistant director there. The ashram had been protesting British colonialism in India and racism against African Americans in the US, but by 1944, they began to turn their activism toward advocating for Puerto Rican independence. Pedro Albizu Campos, who had been president of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, was serving a 10 year sentence for inciting rebellion, but because of a serious heart condition, he had been transferred from Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to Columbus Hospital in Manhattan to serve out his sentence. There, Reynolds and other members of the ashram were able to meet with him and to learn from him about Puerto Rico and the fight for independence. In April, 1945, as secretary of the American League for Puerto Rico Independence, Reynolds testified to a panel of United States Senators as they prepared to vote on a bill on Puerto Rican independence, saying, "It is our sacred and patriotic duty in this period of history to see to it that our government withdraws from Puerto Rico, so that that nation may take its place as a sovereign American Republic, and so that our nation may stand before the world free from any suggestion of imperialist ambition." Later that same year, Reynolds made her first trip to Puerto Rico, traveling around the archipelago for several months, talking to Puerto Ricans to better understand their views on independence. She returned again in 1948. By this time, Albizu Campos had returned to the archipelago after his imprisonment ended, and he was rallying large crowds to the cause of independence. When the administration at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus denied request to use the university theater for a talk by Albizu Campos, the student council called for a one day strike, which led to weeks long tension and police attacking students. When the ACLU refused to help, Reynolds went to Puerto Rico herself to investigate. After four months of interviews, she wrote up her report with plans to publish. Before she could do so, though, she was arrested in November, 1950, on charges she denied, of planning to overthrow the government by violence. As a pacifist, she never advocated for violence in her efforts at Puerto Rican independence. However, as she wrote to her parents,  "When Puerto Ricans are in jail for wanting liberty, I belong there with them." In September, 1951, she was sentenced to two to six years of hard labor. In June of 1952, Reynolds was released on bail pending an appeal. Eventually, she won her appeal in the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. The American League for Puerto Rico's independence had folded, but Reynolds continued her work forming Americans for Puerto Rico's Independence, and pushing for the release of Albizu Campos, who was again incarcerated. Later, she created the US committee to free the five Puerto Rican nationalists to fight for the liberty of five political prisoners. Their sentences were commuted by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, after intense lobbying. In 1977, Reynolds lobbied the United Nations Committee on Decolonization to include Puerto Rico under the rubric of Assembly Resolution 1514, which called for an end to colonial rule. In 1989, Reynolds' 1948 manuscript that had been confiscated by the police when she was arrested, was finally published, with the title, "Campus in Bondage: A 1948 Microcosm of Puerto Rico in Bondage." As she wrote in the updated preface, "Puerto Rico is still in bondage." Ruth Reynolds died in South Dakota on December 2, 1989, at the age of 73. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Lisa G. Materson, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of, "Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds Political Allyship and the Battle for Puerto Rico's Independence."

Kelly Therese Pollock  10:50  
Hi, Lisa, thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Lisa Materson  10:53  
Hi, thanks for having me.

Kelly Therese Pollock  10:55  
I was so excited to learn about Ruth Reynolds, and I'm really thrilled to be talking with you today. Want to start by asking, this is not your first book. So how did you become interested in Ruth Reynolds, decide to do this research, and write this book about her?

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  11:13  
So I did not begin writing a book about Ruth Reynolds. I'm a US Women's Political historian, and I'm interested in the histories of how women, US women, take on political inequality, marginalization and exclusion. And so I originally started writing a book about Puerto Rican women independentistas, and I was interviewing independentista women in Puerto Rico, starting around 2010 to 2012, and several of them mentioned to me Ruth Reynolds. And so she was someone who I was aware of, because they had mentioned her to me. One of them in particular, Isabel Rosado, who was a supporter of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, which is a major organization through the the thread of the book, she was incarcerated with Reynolds. Isabel Rosado was incarcerated for about 11 years, and for 19 months or so, she was incarcerated with Ruth Reynolds, and she Isabel Rosado, who, at the time, was 102 when I interviewed her, subsequently passed away at 107, she talked about Ruth Reynolds in such loving terms and with such great I guess you could say appreciation and respect for her, that it really put this thought in my mind. So then I was, you know, continuing to work on this book on Puerto Rican women independentistas. I was at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at CUNY  in New York, and I met Olga Jimenez de Wagenheim, who was working on a similar project. And we were talking, and she recommended to me, she said, You know, you, why don't you write a book about focusing on Ruth Reynolds? And I thought, "Yes, that's a great idea. I love that. I've been wondering about her." So it kind of took as much research and writing does, it takes on its own path. It was very logical as I was making my way through it, but it didn't start out. And I guess the other thing is that what made me decide to, you know, take Olga's advice, was that I she was an also just a fascinating figure, what I knew about her. Here's this white pacifist who becomes a political prisoner in 1950s Puerto Rico. There's this puzzle. She's a pacifist, but she is a close ally of revolutionary Puerto Rican activists, and so it really was an intriguing puzzle for me to think about and unravel. So all of these things together really led me in that direction.

Kelly Therese Pollock  13:56  
You've mentioned some oral interviews, but what are the other sources you're able to tap into in doing this research? Because you're really able to put together a pretty close look at Ruth Reynolds' life this this through line, really, from her birth all the way through her activist work. 

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  14:17  
So in addition to the oral histories which I just mentioned, I, courtesy of the FBI and the Intelligence Division of the Insular Police, there are vast surveillance files available that record her activities and the activities of other pro independence activists, or people who are identified as subversives in Puerto Rico in the continental United States. And so you know, anybody who's looked at these FBI files or these insular police files, in the case of Reynolds,  her file is a carpeta, Carpeta 1340 and pro independence activists and identified so called subversives. There are 1000s of carpetas files that were open by the the Intelligence Division of Insular Police tracking everything that these people are doing, where they're going, who they're seeing. I mean, it's it's really quite monotonous, but it's also very detailed. And so that was a wealth of information for me, that's available. Her file is at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, but there's also a bunch of files at the general archive in Puerto Rico and other sites in Puerto Rico. So that's a vast set of sources available for me in doing this. But that also is obviously one perspective, and that is of the governments that's surveilling the activities of people that they identify as fundamentally as enemies of the state or a subversives. And so the other key piece for me were archives, particularly those at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, which has a large archive of Reynolds, which I mentioned a few moments ago. And one thing to recognize, I think about this archive, is, is that Reynolds was an intellectual warrior in many ways. In other words, she understood a big part of her role as kind of taking on what Edward Said, called colonial knowledge, and that's created at the same time as colonial ignorance, in other words, bringing to attention what you know, what she would describe as what the US was doing in Puerto Rico. And so the point, the reason why that's important to know, is that throughout her life, or during her activist period of her life, she collected things. She collected newspapers, magazines. She interviewed hundreds of Puerto Ricans of diverse backgrounds about their experiences, and that's what became the basis of her archive at the Center of Puerto Rican Studies, and it's used by a wide variety of people, writing on a bunch of different topics, because she collected all of this. And at the same time, she sat down for a set of interviews, over 100 hours of interviews with Blanca Vazquez in the 1980s toward the end of Reynolds life, and recorded, you know, her experiences of really a history of resistance and repression that doesn't appear in US history textbooks. And so, from my mind, that's one of her last acts of solidarity, if you will, is to kind of leave this history in the archives. But so kind of, these are just two very big parts of archival sources that I used to tell the story.

Kelly Therese Pollock  18:11  
You say in the book that she's kind of an unlikely, or she has kind of an unlikely background to lead to this. You mentioned up top that she's, you know, this white woman who's a pacifist, and this is not necessarily the person you would expect to to be an activist showing up in in Puerto Rico, being in solidarity with the Puerto Rican independentistas. And to add to that, she grows up in a strict Methodist household in South Dakota, in the Black Hills. So how do we get from there? She's in South Dakota in kind of what is the frontier at the time, to being in the 40s and the 50s and the 60s in this solidarity activism, you know, what, what is it about her background then that that sort of leads to this path?

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  19:06  
So you mentioned that she, you know, she came from this religious conservative family, and so this is a critical factor in her making her way to becoming what I call solidarity activist, in the sense that you know, the her religious upbringing and her family imbuing in her a really strong sense of patriotism and respect for US democracy were foundational to where she ultimately went. So they, while she didn't hold on to many aspects of that conservativism, she was a curious person, and she was interested in, for example, the social gospel, because of her religious upbringing, the idea that that the teachings of Jesus should be applied to social justice movements. So it kind of led her on a journey to understand these ideas that she had been she'd grown up with us, democracy and and her Methodism, her religion, and she becomes involved in the pacifist movement while she's in college and graduate school, eventually at Northwestern. So you know, that's kind of one big, big piece that makes a lot of sense when you see where she goes with her thinking. The other big piece, and this is really the turning point that leads to her move towards solidarity activism, in particular involvement in the Puerto Rican independence movement, is that she moves to New York in 1941 in order to continue pursuing her interest in pacifism, and she joined something called the Harlem Ashram. The Harlem Ashram was one of several pacifist cooperatives across the United States during this time period that were engaged in studying Gandhian non violence, Mahatma Gandhi's ideas of non violence and civil disobedience, and they were studying in order to apply those ideas to the modern Black civil rights movement and to the free India movement. And while she is in New York doing that, where the Harlem Ashram is located, is in the largest Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York, and she meets her neighbors, and as someone will do as they're, you know, making their way around their neighborhood. And you know, this is a community that's awash in independent sentiment at that time, that she's arriving there, and that is critical. They ask her, they start talking. And they say, you know, "Why are you and other members of the ashram so interested in defeating British imperialism and colonialism in India, when the US, when your nation, the US, has its own colony in Puerto Rico?" And this is a, this is a big turning point. It kind of hits their their shot. They hadn't thought about these things at the same time, these pro independence neighbors, they start to give her and the other members of the ashram kind of a primer on the anti democratic mechanisms that the United States had established in Puerto Rico since its invasion in 1898 and and, and they introduce her to Pedro Albizu Campos, who is in New York. And Albizu Campos was the leader of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico that was working for Puerto Rico's independence. And when they introduced her to him and other members of the ashram, they begin these conversations, they become friends, they share ideas. And it is after and during these conversations that she and other members, but especially her, she really starts to focus on the movement for Puerto Rico's independence and becomes convinced that being patriotic to the United States means being anti colonial and working for independence in Puerto Rico. So this is a pivotal moment in that path, and it's a long journey that she then takes on for the rest of her life.

Kelly Therese Pollock  23:18  
We've mentioned at this point a few times the term solidarity activism and radical solidarity, so maybe at this point it would be a good time to define that for the listeners. Say what you mean by that, why we're why we're using this terminology. 

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  23:34  
I should first mention that Ruth Reynolds did not use the term radical solidarity. I used or developed this concept and defined it as such in the book to capture the significance of her approach to being an ally, and what I mean by that is her approach to mobilizing for the goals of a community of which she was not a part. And as I was studying her history, you know, the challenge for Reynolds was providing support for a group that she was not a part without just replicating an existing hierarchical relationship, in her case, between the colonizers and colonized. And so the way that she met this challenge was by, in essence, looking at those who she claimed allyship, pro independence, Puerto Ricans, as agents of their own national identity. And she really focused on her own agency in shaping US, the United States, political destiny. And so I describe three main components in the book that that were the the elements of this radical solidarity, her political practice. One, Reynolds focused on what she had in common with those with whom she claimed allyship, particularly the Nationalist Party. And this is kind of me unraveling this puzzle of, how do these people find common cause? And so so she doesn't focus on what separates them. She focuses on what they hold in common. What they hold in common is a critique of US colonial state violence. And there is plenty of colonial state violence for them to share critique on: the original 1898 US invasion of Puerto Rico, the conscription of Puerto Ricans in the US military, the taking of land in places like Vieques to build military bases. And then as the Cold War carries on, the use of different parts of Puerto Rico on these military bases for Cold War maneuvers. And so there's plenty for them to have in common to talk about, despite their differences. So that's a key component, too. She in her radical solidarity too, she doesn't tell Puerto Ricans how to conduct their own struggle for national sovereignty or how to run an independent Puerto Rico. And critically, three, she advocates for an independent Puerto Rico on her identity as a patriotic US citizen, and on her fundamental beliefs about US democracy. And this is what I had mentioned before, her idea that advancing an anti colonial agenda for her was patriotic, and so she's always doing it from her kind of perspective of making US the best democracy it can be. She focused on root, the root causes of Puerto Rican dissent. She focused on what she called the large violence, or the basic violence of US colonialism. And so this is how she took on this kind of challenge of being in allyship with a group of people who have very different backgrounds and even strategic approaches. She attempted to cross that difference in that way.

Kelly Therese Pollock  27:06  
Her ability to reach common cause, or to have sort of a commonality with the people that she's working with is sort of inadvertently made easier for her by her harassment by the FBI and insular police, and especially then when she herself is incarcerated. And I think that's kind of borne out in in your book. You see that after that, it's like the the other Puerto Rican activists sort of almost embrace her a little bit more, as you know, like, well, yes, she gets us. And you mentioned that in the some of the interviews that you did that you know that they had been incarcerated with her. So how do we get there, this point where she is, in fact, arrested and incarcerated in Puerto Rico, and then what, what is that experience like for her, and how does it frame her activism moving forward?

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  28:04  
As I mentioned, she's an intellectual warrior. She's interested in documenting, "what the US is doing in Puerto Rico." And so she's in Puerto Rico in 1948 to document the violent suppression of pro independence student activist at the University of Puerto Rico, the University of Puerto Rico, the flagship university. And that's kind of like the details, if you will. But the big picture is that she is there, and in fact, she's becoming involved in the independence movement at these monumental years in the history of Puerto Rico, between 1945 and 1952 when the United States, working with insular allies, is starting the machinery to create the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which is, what is the what the current status of Puerto Rico. So these are these moments where the United States and insular allies are using their vast state powers to silence opponents to the creation of the Commonwealth. The people who were opposed to the creation of the Commonwealth saw it as something that was almost like a window dressing, another form of colonialism, more kind of local autonomy, but fundamentally not a different form of relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. And so these pro independence activists, getting back to 1948 and the the student strike, they are being silenced as part of this machinery that's moving toward the creation of the Commonwealth. So one of the things that gets passed amid this 1948 strike is something called the Gag Law, or the or Insular Law Number 53. And the reason why I'm telling all this background is because I'm moving toward her arrest and incarceration with others. And I think it's important to understand the context that there is this large battle taking place between those who are working towards the creation of a commonwealth and those who are deeply opposed to the creation of a Commonwealth because they hold a pro independence status, and the Gag Law gets passed, and it makes it illegal to advocate the overthrow of the insular government of Puerto Rico. And it's something that's actually modeled on the Smith Act, which was used to in the continental United States, to primarily go against but the US government against communists, people who were engaged, involved or suspected to be involved in the Communist Party USA. But the point is, is that the way it was actually enacted, that is the Gag Law, is that it was used to prosecute individuals who who favored independence or who were public about their support for independence. So all of this is happening. She's there in 1948, she's documenting pro independent student activists, and she stays there, writing it up as a book, and in 1950, there's a major uprising that takes place in Puerto Rico, the 1950 Nationalist Party Uprising, and it is called for and led by Pedro Albizu Campos, who, as you will recall, was the individual who was so important to her politicization and learnings about Puerto Rico, and she's there when this happens and there's a massive dragnet and arrest not just of people who were involved in the uprising, not just Nationalist Party supporters who were  involved In the uprising, but anybody who was perceived to be very publicly engaged in independence activism, and this included Reynolds. So she is arrested and she is incarcerated for two to six years, or that was her sentence for violating the Gag Law. Hers was a speech crime. She was found guilty for taking an oath at a Nationalist Party event, and the oath was one supporting the to give one's life for independence for Puerto Rico. She denied taking the oath, she denied being a member of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, but she was still convicted. And so to return to, I think, which was part of the original question is, how did it shape her experience? So she is now, by now, I mean, in the early 1950s she's incarcerated with a group of women who were Nationalist Party supporters. And that experience transforms her, and it transforms her relationship with, with, with many of these women. She already had a good relationship with many of them, but they go through some very different, difficult experiences together. First of all, they are incarcerated together. They are in solitary confinement. There's very difficult living conditions. They are she becomes malnourished, and there are also accusations of radiation poisoning and other potential biological weapons. But the point is, is that while she of course, never became Puerto Rican or became Puerto Rican nationalist, she did enter into a new community. And so while she had been an outsider, while Reynolds had been an outsider to those with whom she claimed allyship, she became an insider to a group of political prisoners who had a shared experience of trauma that they experienced together. They supported each other through and from the perspective of those who were the Nationalist Party supporters with whom she was incarcerated, they trusted her tremendously after that. And so in future kind of moments they they turned to each other for support. And so it was a turning point in her relationship in terms of she was deeply trusted after that point.

Kelly Therese Pollock  34:26  
Yeah, and so perhaps obviously, this experience of being incarcerated did not dissuade her from this activism. In fact, if anything, only strengthens her resolve. She keeps fighting for independence for Puerto Rico, and doesn't seem to have dissuaded any of them in this fight. But the activism itself has to sort of adapt over time to the political situation both in the larger United States and the political situation in Puerto Rico, which is changing. You mentioned this development of the Commonwealth, which is not a huge change, but is a it forces them to change tactics a little bit, especially in their dealings with United Nations. Can you talk a little bit about the ways that the that the tactics have to change over time, that the type of work that Reynolds is doing has to change? The places that she has to advocate are shifting over the decades that she is and it is decades that she is working on this.

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  35:38  
Yes, so you know, just to place this story, really, in time again, we're really in 1952 with the creation of the Commonwealth, which does provide greater local autonomy, but it doesn't fundamentally change this relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. The you know, the US still can make unilateral decisions for population denied formal representation and fundamental use constitutional rights, and there is this tremendous state powers that are used to suppress opponents of the Commonwealth. So that's where we are in 1952, and what it does is it means that there are several decades where it is very, very very difficult to engage or publicly support independence in Puerto Rico, in the continental United States, and it makes it very, very difficult to organize a mass solidarity movement. There isn't a mass solidarity movement during this period, and this is part of the reason is because people, first of all, the independence movement has really gone underground. People are afraid of losing jobs. People are afraid of being marginalized, prosecution, and so it also means that it's not really possible to kind of meet pro independence activists as an outsider in the same way that it was possible years before. Now, that's kind of one trajectory in terms of these kind of many what you might say desert years between the 1950s and 1970s and you specifically asked about the United Nations, because the United Nations, or putting the colonial case of Puerto Rico before the United Nations, is something that Reynolds and others had worked on prior to 1952 to get the United Nations to consider Puerto Rico's colonial case and support its creation as an independent nation, or its independence. So what happens in 1952 is that, you know, basically, the United States and the international community, for the most part, considered the colonial case of Puerto Rico resolved, and then United Nations, what it does is it removes Puerto Rico from the list of non self governing territories in 1953. Now what that means is that until that point, from the creation of the United Nations in 1945 up until 1953, the United States was responsible for delivering, on a yearly basis, reports on its management activities in Puerto Rico. All countries with colonies were required to report how they were treating those colonies and the removal of Puerto Rico from the list of non self governing territories was a major victory for the United States, because, remember, we are in the Cold War, and the Soviet Union is saying, you know, the US is, is being very hypocritical. They are claiming to be the leader of the free world, but they have a colony, or several colonies. And so the removal of Puerto Rico from the list of non self governing territories becomes the kind of answer to this accusation. But, and this is getting back to Reynolds and others who are and remain active in Puerto Ricans and North American allies remain active in the independence movement, makes it very, very difficult to get the colonial case of Puerto Rico before the United Nations, because from that point forward, any conversation about Puerto Rico has to go through the United States to get onto the docket in the United Nations. And so to kind of pull back a little bit to say something about her activism during this time period, she keeps at it. She works to bring the case of Puerto Rico to the United Nations. She does so as a member of one of the solidarity organizations that she formed from her perspective as a US identified citizen and North American and patriotic American. And the other thing that she does during this time period is she works for the release of nationalist party prisoners, people who remain incarcerated for many decades after the uprising, and also after 1954 when the Nationalist Party engages an attack on US Congress, four members go into Congress and open fire and injure several congressmen, and she continues to while she disagrees with their action, she keeps focus on the origins of their perspectives, that bringing attention to what the United States was doing in Puerto Rico. So she continues at it is the kind of the through line, but it's pretty lonely for many years, until the 1970s.

Kelly Therese Pollock  40:39  
Reynolds, of course, ultimately is unsuccessful in getting Puerto Rican independence, as Puerto Rico is still not independent. But do you think that there are lessons that activists today can take from her life, from her activism, ways that she was successful in, things that she was doing, types of activism that she was doing, ways that she positioned herself, things that that people can sort of take today as a lesson?

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  41:09  
I think there are many lessons or things to learn from her and from her experiences. For me, one of the big takeaways is that there are no unlikely allies. You know, that was the puzzle that kind of brought me into it to begin with, in studying her life history. And so it became very clear to me that there is no such thing as an unlikely ally. I think that, as a historian, what her story tells us is that solidarities take root in certain historical contexts when people have the opportunity to meet each other, to develop friendships, to share their ideas, even when they have profound differences, and she did become active during a time when people had an opportunity to bridge geographic and life experiences. I think it also shows us that movement solidarity movements endure during specific circumstance, historical circumstances. And in her case, it was during this case, these periods of tremendous repression. And I think you know, it, her story shows that outsiders can advance a struggle, outsiders, so to speak, can advance a struggle without imposing or neutralizing on the goals of a struggle. And that it's possible to keep a focus on root causes of in her case, it was the sources and consequences of colonialism. So I think there's, you know, there's, there's many elements to it that are worth paying attention to in thinking about what can we learn from her life story and experience.

Kelly Therese Pollock  42:54  
How can listeners get a copy of your book?

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  42:57  
The book is available through the UNC Press site, and also through independent booksellers, and, of course, through Amazon as well.

Kelly Therese Pollock  43:09  
Lisa, thank you so much for speaking with me. It was really fun to get to learn about Ruth Reynolds, and I've really enjoyed speaking with you.

Dr. Lisa G. Materson  43:18  
Thank you very much. I've enjoyed this a great deal. 

Teddy  44:23  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistoryPodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History or on Facebook @UnsungHistoryPodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistoryPodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lisa Materson Profile Photo

Lisa Materson

Lisa G. Materson is professor of US women’s and gender history at the University of California, Davis, and a specialist in US women's political history. Professor Materson's research focuses on women’s involvement in social and political justice movements in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She uses intersectional frameworks to study how ideas about women and gender shaped diverse political strategies and forms of resistance in the US past. ​

Professor Materson's new book Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico’s Independence (UNC Press, 2024) introduces a central figure of US anticolonialism. Reynolds led an extraordinary life. Yet stories of women like her who challenged US colonial exploitation are largely unknown. Such an erasure is a symptom of the marginalization of Puerto Rico more generally—both its politics and its status debates—in US history, as well as the centering of men’s experiences in the history of liberation politics. Excavating Reynolds’s anticolonial activism and the distinct historical contexts in which it was forged not only shifts the gendered center of gravity in liberation politics history, but it also elucidates a powerful model of globally engaged justice activism with enduring relevance beyond Puerto Rico.

Materson is also the author of For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932 (UNC Press, 2009; paperback, 2013), which analyzes African American women’s turn to the party system at the local and national leve… Read More