José Hernández-Álvarez Papers

José Hernández-Álvarez received a B.A. and M.A. from Fordham University and began his career as a Jesuit seminarian teaching at Colegio San Ignacio in the 1950s. He went on to complete a Ph.D. in Sociology and Latin American Studies at the University of Minnesota driven by his research on poverty in a sugar cane plantation in the early 1960s. As a researcher at the University of Puerto Rico and the University of California, Berkeley, Hernández wrote "Return Migration to Puerto Rico" on how the reverse flow of workers followed on U.S. factory relocation to cheap-labor nations. Then, he organized and managed community development projects in Brazil for the Ford Foundation, with international funding and local professional support, for five years.

Following his work for the Ford Foundation, Hernández went on to teach at the University of Arizona, where he wrote "People Power and Policy," on economic development from the bottom up. As Research Director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the mid-1970s, he organized a national data file on income inequality (matching gender, race and economic variables), producing a report to Congress. He also prepared documentation for Congressional approval of Public Law 94-311, mandating federal agencies to add a Spanish Origin (Hispanic) ethnic identifier to all data on the nation's population, which the media dubbed as creating a "second minority." After eight years as a University of Wisconsin professor, Hernández joined the faculty of the Black and Puerto Rican Studies Department at Hunter College, CUNY. There, he taught and wrote "Conquered Peoples in America," through five editions, on groups made part of the nation as a result of war and occupation. In collaboration with other faculty, Hernández advanced Puerto Rican Studies to a full B.A. major program and added courses in this subject to the menu of core curriculum requirements for graduation.