The 16,000 pounds of local fresh fruit and produce, including pineapples from Manatí, Santa Isabel papayas, and Guánica green plantains, were delivered to Baldor Specialty Foods facility in Hunts Point and distributed in partnership with City Harvest, the nonprofit known for distributing food surpluses to New Yorkers in need. Seniors, low-income families, front-line responders, and community centers that serve the area will land at the top of the list to receive the goods.

The donation is an effort to show solidarity with some of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods, many of which include large Latino, and in particular Puerto Rican, communities. The gift also represents a payback of kindness received by Puerto Ricans from New Yorkers after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, Rodríguez said.

Just before the hurricane, Rodríguez-Feliciano had met New York State Commissioner of Agriculture Richard Ball at a conference. The first email he received after the storm came from Ball. The two spent the next 20 months in a concerted effort to have New York support the island’s farmers by purchasing their produce; Puerto Ricans, in turn, purchased New York State apples.

“The state was developing fresh food markets where residents could use food stamps and they wanted to include offerings directly from Puerto Rican farmers,” he said.

Seeds of Collaboration

When Rodríguez-Feliciano was a sophomore majoring in political science and economic development at Fordham College at Rose Hill, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, was dean of the college. Father McShane mentored Rodríguez-Feliciano through the Matteo Ricci Society (now the Matteo Ricci Seminar), a group created by Father McShane as a way to encourage talented students to conduct research and pursue fellowships that support a more just society.

Rodríguez-Feliciano would go on to earn a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, which he used to examine the economy of his native Puerto Rico. He used the scholarship to get an MBA from the Yale School of Management and returned to Puerto Rico in 2002, after work experiences in economic development in the U.S.

“I wanted to study the issue of how to stir economic development in Puerto Rico, so I went back and looked at the history and options for the future,” he said.

Rodríguez-Feliciano spent five years total in the Bronx, four years at Fordham, and an additional year after he graduated living in the borough. It was then that he established the ties he maintains to this day.

Rodríguez-Feliciano said the first big immigration wave of Puerto Ricans moving to New York was caused in part by the displacement of farmers due to the development of the newly industrialized agriculture—many of the farmers settled in New York City.

“This is very much a part of my story here and Fordham encouraged me to pursue fellowships that could address those problems,” he said.

Rodríguez-Feliciano said he recognized the connection between the former farmers and their descendants in Bronx communities, which is mirrored by a recent influx of other Latin American communities immigrants fleeing economic hardship.

“Immigrants and brown communities seem invisible to the mainstream. Few have their hands on the structures of power,” he said.

As a result, underserved communities have to be resourceful and take care of one another out of necessity, he said, adding that corporations and their leadership could learn by paying attention to and nurturing communities like those in the South Bronx.

“These communities are generous, entrepreneurial, and solve their own problems by creating what they need, because no one is coming to rescue them,” he said.

He said that he expects that what he observed in Puerto Rico after Maria to play out in Latino communities amid the pandemic.

“We can look at these communities for example because they are collaborating all the time,” he said. “There are small crises in their lives all the time. They’re pooling resources all the time; they’re taking care of each other all the time.”

“That really then gave me the opportunity to write a book that I hope is seen as very pro-South Bronx, and to try to demonstrate that the devastation in the ‘70s and early ‘80s was not caused by residents of the South Bronx, but by this confluence of forces that really caused the whole world to think of the South Bronx as a terrible, terrible place, and to show that the residents of the South Bronx and other community members were really instrumental in bringing the South Bronx back,” she said during a talk presented by the Fordham College at Rose Hill Honors Program at the Rose Hill campus on Monday, Feb. 24.

“It gave me a chance to dispel some of these negative terrible stereotypes about people in the South Bronx,” she added.

The book includes stories of resilience, such as Evelina Lopez Antonetty’s work in bringing summer meal programs to the Bronx for students when they were out of school. And it tells stories of activism, such as resident Kathryn Speller’s work in marching against hospital closings and organizing tenants rights groups.

McLaughlin’s book has become the centerpiece of a new course in Fordham College at Rose Hill’s Honors Program called Bronx Exploration: History, Economy, and Culture.

The class stems out of a new honors program curriculum, launched in fall 2019, that aims to educate a community of scholars for justice and among other things, teaches students about the history and culture of the community, said Eve Keller, Ph.D., professor of English and honors program director.

The effort extends to faculty as well, Keller noted. “This is part of an honors program project to become better citizens of the neighborhood in which we live and work,” she said.

The event was the second in a series of talks about the borough that the honors program has hosted. The first, “The State of the Health of the Bronx,” was held on Tuesday, Feb. 11, and featured Dr. Jane Bedell, the medical director of the Bronx Neighborhood Health Action Center, and Kim Freeman, manager of the Tremont Neighborhood Health Action Center.

Learning from the Community

Honors students in the audience asked McLaughlin about her work in the borough, the history of the South Bronx, and what it looks like today.

Many of them said they enjoyed how she told the history of the area through the eyes of local residents.

“I appreciated that you quoted really mostly community members, and people you knew personally and people who spoke about their own problems, experiences, ideas, and solutions. In our college courses, we really do more often read the work of academics and officials, but you tell the stories of real people’s experience,” said Amelia Medved, a first-year student..

McLaughlin said she wrote it that way to amplify the voices of those who might not be considered the “experts” or “officials.”

“It wouldn’t make sense for me to write an academic history book. What I wrote was really like a people’s history,” she said. “I featured people who I knew, I liked, I admired. I thought their stories should be told.”

She also helped people in attendance understand the wide variety of factors that impacted the South Bronx community during the 1970s and 1980s, including the flight of white and middle-class residents, a lack of a social service infrastructure, landlord issues, redlining, and Robert Moses-led construction projects like the Cross Bronx Expressway.

“The ‘70s were really a hard time in New York City—the city was facing bankruptcy,” she said. But the factors above, which were particularly prevalent in the South Bronx, led to the area being “the poorest congressional district for 30 years.”

When her agency, which eventually became known as BronxWorks, first started in the early ‘70s, she said they were a “two-to-four person storefront,” but everyone flocked to them because they were the only ones in town. Since then, she said their work expanded to address children and youth services, immigrants, homeless individuals, families, people with HIV/AIDS, working-age adults, and senior citizens.

McLaughlin said that the group’s work continues as they address new challenges, including ongoing development and potential gentrification, which she called a very “hard issue.”

“I think [Mayor Bill de Blasio] feels, as a lot of people do, that the city has to have more housing and that it’s the lack of housing that’s driving up prices,” she said. “People in the Bronx, some of the people really welcome some of the new buildings and want there to be a larger middle class in the Bronx.”

On the other hand, she said there’s this feeling that many of the projects are “luxury” buildings that will drive people out of their homes and neighborhoods.

“You build buildings and people with higher incomes come in and then stores start catering to them and commercial landlords start raising their rents on the stores, the mom and pop businesses go out of business as more high-end stores come in,” McLaughlin said. “Those high-end stores also may be less likely to hire community residents and then that also has a ripple effect to other apartment buildings.”

Still, despite its challenges, McLaughlin said she hopes that the book shows the strength of the Bronx and its people.

“The Bronx has always been home to a diverse group of immigrants,” she said, highlighting that all groups live together, instead of in separate sections, such as Chinatown or Little Italy. “It’s different in the Bronx than other places. In the Bronx, the immigrants are diffused throughout the populations—it’s much more mixed. I think that’s really been a strength of the Bronx.”

“My whole life, I’ve been this kid who’s gone through change and challenge, and I’ve turned that into my competitive energy,” said Rainford, managing director and head of Advancing Black Leaders strategy at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The students from the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology in the South Bronx gathered at Faber Hall on Aug. 9 to discuss Rainford’s award-winning memoir, Until the Brighter Tomorrow: One Woman’s Courageous Climb from the Projects to the Podium, part of a summer school reading program sponsored by Areté Education, a community academic initiative.

A Bronx native herself, Rainford grew up in the projects, changing homes and schools every year (“if you name a school, I probably went to it”) while her family tried to make ends meet. She endured poverty, a drug culture, domestic violence, the death of her brother, and ultimately the devastating suicide of her mother, which led to Rainford dropping out of Fordham during her sophomore year.

“I had no intention of ever coming back,” she said.  “I lost my way.”

But support from University career advisers and the encouraging words and deeds of her late mother—the daughter of South Carolina sharecroppers with only a sixth-grade education—was seared into Rainford’s consciousness and drew her back into the fold.

“When I returned to Fordham, I wanted to make my mother proud. I feel like she’s been sitting on my shoulder, encouraging me ever since.”

Rainford commuted to Rose Hill and Lincoln Center during the day, returning to the Bronx where she was a cashier and manager at Key Food at night. On her days off from school, she worked at the bank nearby. With an aptitude for numbers and money, she majored in economics and earned her degree.

After meeting with recruiters on campus at Rose Hill, Rainford accepted an offer from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, her employer for the next 21 years, where she rose to become the first black woman to be promoted to senior vice president and the most senior black woman in the Federal Reserve system. But, she said, “I was just a good worker. I wasn’t working for the title.”

At JPMorgan Chase, Rainford continues to work with businesses as they reorganize and restructure. “My sole focus is to figure out how we hire, retain, and advance people who look like you and me,” she told the students, who were of diverse backgrounds.

Rainford says the early hardships she faced provided her with the experience, tools, and tenacity for later success.

“I was good at change. We were always struggling, but I was really good at adjusting and turning personal experience into a gift that no one else around me had,” said Rainford, who joined Fordham’s Board of Trustees in July. “I can look at a situation that everyone else has been staring at for a year and see it differently.”

Rainford signed copies of her book and led roundtable discussions facilitated by Sarah Benis Scheier-Dolberg, Ed.D.; John Garibaldi; and Anthony Baez of Areté Education. At the end of the session, the group presented Rainford with a thank-you card.

One of the students, Mariyam Sumarah, asked if there ever was a time when Rainford wanted to stop trying.

“Well, sometimes you can forget that the fight is worth it,” Rainford said. “It will take a while, but you have to keep at it. People are going to close doors on you. Just never give up.”

Publishers told Rainford that her story was not believable and advised her to restructure the narrative. Rainford refused, and instead launched her own publishing company, Elloree Press, a platform for new and aspiring writers to tell their own stories.

Following the event, the students toured campus venues including Hughes Hall, the Rose Hill home of the Gabelli School of Business; Dealy Hall; and Walsh Family Library, learning about college core classes, adjunct professors, and internships.

Student Leslie Rivas is considering Fordham’s Criminal Justice program. “I would be the first in my family to go to college,” she said. “College will be hard, and I have to be prepared to achieve.”

Another student, Pedro Nunez, reflected on Rainford’s life. “It inspired me and made me want to expand my education and keep doing good,” he said.

Rainford reflected on her own life as well. “In some way, I think God made me go through all that I went through so that I could be here today,” she said. “My purpose on the planet is to be a role model for others. I walk the streets that you walk, and if I can do those things, so can you.”

—Deborah Anders