[7][8] In the following year the newly formed Puerto Rican government would offer to make the first assistant of that city's Mechanic Arts High School, Arthur D. Deane, the supervisor of the island's industrial training.

Allen, an infamous figure in Puerto Rico's history as an American colony, was a former congressman from Lowell and Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Spanish–American War who was appointed to head the island's new government by President McKinley, whom he had accompanied to Mount Tom two years earlier.

[11] During his visit Allen touted the construction of roads which had been completed with no-bid contracts as a resounding success, while also praising the tariff situation around the island's sugar industry as ideal.

On May 7, 1934, Escobar defeated bantamweight contender and Canadian flyweight titleholder Bobby Leitham, in a fight that made headlines in local papers and was seen as a dramatic upset in the world of boxing.

[23][24] By this time the company, a maker of "pakkawood" composite handles, was sold to EKCO, however Resnic remained with the firm,[25] and would travel to Puerto Rico himself as Mayor in 1963 while vacationing, representing one of Holyoke's earliest informal exchanges with the island.

Some of the earliest programs working towards integration came from the Greater Springfield Council of Churches, which by 1961 had recruited a number of volunteers, many of whom were retired teachers, to help teach English to Puerto Rican women.

[30] In the 1960s, a large segment of the valley's Puerto Rican population was displaced when Springfield launched a massive urban renewal project in part to expand its highway system, razing many of the low-cost brick tenements between Metro Center and Memorial Square.

In 1967 this new population was mainly low income and very young, with more than half of all Puerto Rican residents being school-aged children, while public agencies remained poorly equipped to provide for the community's needs.

[17] The growing tension between the two groups reached a breaking point when on July 27, 1973, a 20 year old Boricua man was arrested for stealing a bicycle,[37] struggling with officers before being handcuffed on the hood of a police cruiser.

[49] Many additional challenges faced the Puerto Rican community at this time, including what the Model Cities director had cited as a lack of leadership and political means of representation in municipal government.

[50] An effort was also made by city hall to establish a referral agency for Latino voters, the block grant-funded Casa Latina was set up in the early 70's but, regarded by community members as ineffective, would be dissolved before the end of the decade.

[56] Following a multi-month standoff between the mayor's office and the Federal government, and threats of litigation by the latter for contempt,[57] the desegregation plan was signed in US District Court on December 22, 1981, redistricting the city's schools.

[58] Among of the concerns frequently cited among both the greater Holyoke Puerto Rican communities and formal surveys from the Valley's nonprofits was a profound lack of representation within the ranks of city government.

[63] Incorporated on July 28, 1982, the community development corporation made its official debut to the city government on April 1, 1983, with plans to purchase and rehabilitate two troubled properties in South Holyoke.

Nueva Esperanza's mission, though initially dealing in improving housing conditions for the Puerto Rican community and South Holyoke's poor, gradually incorporated the work of developing neighborhood leadership.

[66] Around this same time, a higher infant mortality rate, and the onset of the AIDS epidemic, both of which had a disparate effect on minorities, including the Puerto Rican population, led to the establishment of the Coalition of Spanish Speaking Providers.

Medina, who was active instrumental in organizing the nonprofit Enlace de Familias, serving as its director in subsequent decades would be the first Puerto Rican woman to hold any public office in the Commonwealth.

[72] This same year, artist and retired factory worker Angel Sánchez Ortíz moved to Holyoke, and began to work with youths in the city and the Greater Springfield area to provide them with new outlets of creativity and combat a culture of gang activity.

Since that time his own work has been featured in a number of venues, including the Worcester Art Museum, Lowell Folk Festival, and the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Clemente, the first Latin American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, was also known for his philanthropy in the Caribbean and Central America, and died in a plane crash on a trip to provide relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year's Eve 1972.

In attendance for the dedication ceremony was the right fielder's widow, Vera Clemente (née Zabala), who thanked city residents for honoring her late husband, and presided over the unveiling with the department of public works.

[75] In recent years the Holyoke community has seen greater national coverage, including a feature in NPR's Code Switch, and in 2016 hosted a summit of New England Puerto Rican leaders sponsored by Hunter College's Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños.

[83] Cruz was presented the key to the city on April 28, 2018 by Mayor Alex Morse to honor that "in such a time of despair [she] provided a beacon of hope and opportunity for Puerto Ricans.

[89][90] Not unlike in the Greater New York area, Holyoke and its surrounding cities of Springfield and Chicopee, are home to a number of self-identified bodegas, small independent convenience stores often having delis or produce.

[97] The museum, working in tandem with the Holyoke Public Library, has also been in the process of collecting and curating firsthand accounts of this history through the "Nuestros Senderos" program, with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The city's Latino population was a much smaller demographic then, and not enough additional papers were sold to warrant the change, while the decision was met with paranoia by many non-Hispanic whites who, Dwight would later speculate, "thought we were going to sneak stories over on them.

[104] Not long after the Transcript folded in 1994, the Holyoke Sun would make a similar attempt with a single page dedicated to news in Spanish; however, this was received as too little by the Puerto Rican community and again faced the same backlash from non-Spanish speakers.

In 2000, local journalist Anita Rivera worked with The Republican to launch El Pueblo Latino (The Latin People), a Spanish weekly which covers news in the Greater Holyoke area.

In July 2018, Diosdado Lopez and La Familia Hispana, Inc. donated a collection of tapes containing Vecinos/Neighbors programs and other related local media to the Puerto Rican Cultural Project at the Holyoke Public Library.