The lecture explored how progressive Quaker political interventions into US Puerto Rico affairs -- between the Foraker Act (1900) and the Jones Act (1917) – structured broader insular policy debates over the extension of collective citizenship, and self-government practices in overseas dependent territories.
In his lecture, Figueroa showed how early 20th century progressive Quakers in their pursuit of liberal egalitarian outcomes (in their policy reform activities) accepted the dominant and divisive Christian racialist assumptions of the times (e.g. rooted in Larmarkianism) that produced some unintended consequences in terms of U.S. Puerto Rico policy development that still resonate today.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20150606150805840