{"id":218562,"date":"2026-06-13T21:49:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/218562\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T21:49:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:49:21","slug":"philadelphians-honor-anniversary-of-sin-colonias-bicentennial-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/218562\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphians honor anniversary of \u2018Sin Colonias\u2019 bicentennial march"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

A group of Philadelphia organizers is using the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary as an opportunity to revisit July Fourth, 1976: the day tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of North Philadelphia, demanding a bicentennial \u201csin colonias,\u201d without colonies.\n<\/p>\n

The march, which was organized by the July 4th Coalition<\/a>, came to be known as the Sin Colonias protest. Members of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, women\u2019s rights advocates, Black liberation groups, Vietnam War veterans and student groups marched down Lehigh Avenue to Fairmount Park, calling for Puerto Rican self-determination, economic justice and equality.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe protest really highlighted the colonial status of Puerto Rico, and, more broadly, the history of our country, going back to its founding,\u201d said Paul Socolar, one of the volunteer coordinators of the July 4th Sin Colonias Coalition, which formed this year to commemorate the 1976 march. \u201cEven though it was an anti-colonial revolution that created the United States, from the beginning, the U.S. was doing its own colonizing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"ATony Heriza, \u201cPuerto Rican independence flag carried,\u201d from the \u201cSin Colonias\u201d march on July 4, 1976. (Photo credit: Tony Heriza, Courtesy of July 4 Sin Colonias Coalition)<\/p>\n

Socolar participated in the march 50 years ago as a college student, and said that in addition to it being a \u201chuge and joyous protest,\u201d the event was also personally meaningful because it marked his \u201cfirst significant activism in Philadelphia.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Preserving the legacy of \u2018Sin Colonias\u2019<\/p>\n

The July 4th Sin Colonias Coalition has gathered photographs, historical documents and other materials related to the march on its website<\/a>, and plans to tour college campuses in the fall to educate a younger generation about the historic event.\n<\/p>\n

On Saturday, the July 4th Sin Colonias Coalition and Taller Puertorrique\u00f1o hosted the second of a two-part forum series commemorating the march. The event was part of Taller\u2019s \u201cWe Will Not Hide\u201d<\/a> initiative to mark the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary.\n<\/p>\n

The initiative\u2019s goal is to highlight history that often goes unrecognized, such as the Sin Colonias march, or, in the case of the exhibit on slavery at the President\u2019s House Site, aspects of history that are being removed from public memory and excised from the national narrative, said Rafael Damast, curator and exhibitions program director at Taller.
\n\"FourFrom left to right, Bill McKinney, executive director of New Kensington Development Corporation, Debbie Wei, co-founder of Asian Americans United, Pedro Rodriguez, a community organizer and member of the July 4th Sin Colonias Coalition, and artist Cesar Viveros participate in a panel discussion on coalition building at Taller Puertorrique\u00f1o on June 13, 2026. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people\u2019s histories are being [relegated] to the back of the bus,\u201d he said. \u201cThinking about \u2018We will not hide\u2019 is a way just to talk about different perspectives, and how Taller is thinking about this moment \u2026 is of critical thinking, where each exhibition, each program, is a way just to highlight a people, a perspective, that is otherwise being ignored.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Hosting events and exhibitions<\/a> at Taller that commemorate the Sin Colonias march is especially significant, Damast said, since the march itself originated in the Fairhill neighborhood, where the organization is now located.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,4001,71,70,1471],"class_list":["post-218562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-250","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-puerto-rico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}