This immigration had been different. The Puerto Ricans came not by ship, huddled in the steerage, but by plane. Being U.S. citizens, they beat at no immigration bars, never had their pictures taken in colorful native costume behind the wire enclosures of Ellis Island. They simply seeped in, landing by 20s and 30s from battered planes at La Guardia field, Teterboro and Newark, suddenly appearing beside their cardboard suitcases on the city's sidewalks outside a hole-in-the-wall travel agency.
Jobless, speaking a strange tongue, crowded into miserable tenements, thousands soon turned up on...