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Maria De Castro Blake is the dean advocate for the educational advancement of Puerto Ricans in New Jersey. A resident of New Jersey since 1946, she has organized many of the struggles that Puerto Ricans have waged in order to gain access to a good education. Blake was born July 22, 1911, in Vieques, Puerto Rico. When her mother died in 1927, Blake became the sole caretaker of her 5 brothers and sisters. Despite this, Blake finished high school and worked to earn enough money for her migration to New York.
Blake took a job in the garment district where she earned enough money to bring her brothers and sisters to New York. Blake also enrolled in continuing education classes at Columbia University.
Blake's involvement with Puerto Rican education began with her teaching English to adults and children in a church basement. Taking a secretarial position at Rutgers University, Newark provided a gateway into the Rutgers Continuing Education Division where she worked as a community education specialist. Her volunteer work has included an association with the Newark Board of Education for a bilingual program in the public schools to recruit and train Puerto Rican parents to become involved in the PTA organizations. She was a founding member of the Board of Directors of Aspira, which strives to prevent Puerto Ricans and Hispanics from dropping out of high school; a founding member of the Puerto Rican Congress; founder and president of the Association for the Professional Education of Puerto Ricans; a founding member of the Field Orientation Center for Underprivileged Hispanics (FOCUS) and of Casa de Don Pedro, a nonprofit multiservice agency and organizer for the first Black and Puerto Rican Convention of Newark.
Though Blake never earned a diploma in higher education, her efforts have made a college education possible for hundreds of Hispanics.

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.3/SPCOL.Photograph.773

doi:10.7282/T3W957P1

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