CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

This photo, taken by pioneering student-activist Antonio "Tony" Nieves, member and liaison of the Brooklyn League of Afro-American Collegians (B.L.A.C.) and the Puerto Rican Alliance (P.R.A.), shows members of both P.R.A. and B.L.A.C. at the 1969 flag raising ceremony during the Malcolm X Day and Memorial event on Brooklyn College (BC) campus. Event organizers and attendees can be seen saluting the Puerto Rican and Black Liberation flags prior to raising them on the campus flagpole, located in front of the BC library and the President's office. According to Nieves, students were saluting and supporting "Power to the People," Independence, and the struggle for Civil Rights.

This item is part of the Puerto Rican Studies at Brooklyn College (PRSBC) Collection, which covers the largely Puerto Rican-led student movement at Brooklyn College (CUNY) during the late 1960s and early 1970s that fought for the creation of the Puerto Rican Studies Department at the college. The collection includes oral history interviews with pioneering student activists, photographsof participants and their struggles, and other archival materials on the fight to create the Puerto Rican Studies Department drawn from the Archives and Special Collections library at Brooklyn College.