Piri Thomas

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement spawned a literary movement that expressed the political and cultural aspirations of a dispossessed generation in the form of memoirs and autobiographies. Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets (1967) is an influential example of this genre, acclaimed for its candor and testament to the human spirit. The memoir drew on Thomas’s upbringing in El Barrio during the Great Depression, the dehumanizing racism he faced as the black son of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents, his time in prison and as a gang member, and his rebirth as an educator and a writer. Thomas was an important figure in the Nuyorican (New York–Puerto Rican) literary movement, which fought for the social, cultural, and political empowerment of a community then plagued by high levels of poverty and a lack of social services.

Máximo Colón took this photograph for a segment that WNET’s prime time Puerto Rican television show Realidades devoted to Thomas’s memoir.