Editing Washington Heights, Manhattan (section)

====White flight and Latino immigration====
While signs were slowly appearing for the first half of the 20th century that Washington Heights would not forever be a neighborhood of European Americans, the 1960s and 1970s featured full force demographic shifts. Washington Heights' upwardly mobile white residents began to leave in great numbers, and lower-income Latino population saw great increases.<ref name=CB/>{{Rp|138}} Apart from the allure of suburban homes and their economic capacity to buy them, white residents were spurred to leave by the demographic changes themselves, increasing negligence of residential buildings, and rising crime (having more than doubled between 1969 and 1982).<ref name=CB/>{{Rp|128}}<ref name=Lowenstein/>{{Rp|224}} Compared to the [[white flight]] occurring in other neighborhoods such as the West Bronx, the process was much slower and less destructive as few buildings were outright abandoned or burned.<ref name=CB/>{{Rp|156}}<ref name=Lowenstein/>{{Rp|216}}

While [[Stateside Puerto Ricans|Puerto Ricans]] had been the dominant Latino group in the 1950s, by 1965 [[Cuban Americans|Cubans]] and [[Dominican Americans|Dominicans]] had overtaken them in number, and by 1970 native [[Spanish language|Spanish]] speakers were the majority group in central-eastern census tracts.<ref name=Lowenstein/>{{Rp|215}} Despite being a smaller group, Cuban immigrants in the Heights had an outsized role in business, owning, according to a 1976 estimate, the majority of Latino-owned stores.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/08/12/archives/spanish-influx-felt-in-washington-heights-spanish-influx-felt-in.html|title=Spanish Influx Felt in Washington Heights|date=August 12, 1976|first=Richard|last=Severo|work=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=August 12, 2020}}</ref> The neighborhood's black population also increased, numbering over 25,000 by 1980, and residing in all areas of the neighborhood while remaining a plurality in the southeastern section.<ref name=Lowenstein/>{{Rp|215}}

While the overall trend was of exodus among white residents, the rate of this trend varied among different groups. One of the most pronounced changes occurred with [[Greek Americans|Greek]] immigrants, who had reached their peak in the 1950s with the establishment of [[St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church]] and an accompanying school, only to see within two decades nearly all of the congregation had left for the suburbs.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/nyregion/thecity/25gree.html|title=Its Flock Dwindling, a Greek Parish Reaches Out and Spruces Up|date=June 25, 2006|first=Alex|last=Mindlin|work=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=August 12, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.saintspyridon.net/welcome-to-st.-spyridon/history-of-our-community|title=History of Our Parish|publisher=[[St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church]]|access-date=January 18, 2021}}</ref> On the other hand, the German Jewish exodus was characterized by a decrease in overall population but an increasing presence in the neighborhood's northwestern corner.<ref name=Lowenstein/>{{Rp|216}} By the 1970s, evidence of the exodus of the broader Jewish community was present in the changing landscape of the neighborhood, where [[Kashrut|kosher]] stores and Jewish bakeries were gradually replaced by new small businesses with signs in Spanish.<ref name=Lowenstein/>{{Rp|218}}

While some Dominican immigrants had been arriving in Washington Heights throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the pace increased drastically during the regime of [[Joaquín Balaguer]], who took power in 1966 following the [[Dominican Civil War]].<ref name=dominicanprofile1990>{{cite book|title=Dominican New Yorkers: A Socioeconomic Profile, 1990|year=1995|first1=Ramona|last1=Hernández|first2=Francisco|last2=Rivera-Batiz|first3=Roberto|last3=Agodini|author-link1=Ramona Hernández|publisher=[[CUNY Dominican Studies Institute]]|url=https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=dsi_pubs}}</ref>{{Rp|12}} The combination of the recent passing of the U.S. [[Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965]], Balaguer's policy of freely granting passports, and the Dominican Republic's high unemployment rate created the conditions for growing emigration from the Dominican Republic to the United States.<ref name=mobilityofworkers>{{cite book|first=Ramona|last=Hernández|author-link=Ramona Hernández|year=2002|publisher=[[Columbia University Press]]|title=The Mobility of Workers Under Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States|isbn=9780231505185|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hguAUOXscvwC}}</ref>{{Rp|58}} Some of the initial migrants were left-wing revolutionaries exiled by the Balaguer regime, theorized to have been granted visas through an unwritten agreement with the United States, but the majority of arrivals came for better economic opportunities.<ref name=mobilityofworkers/>{{Rp|58}}<ref>{{cite book|url=https://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/1/xmlpage/2/article/104|access-date=February 9, 2021|publisher=[[Dartmouth College]]|first=Julissa|last=Reynoso|title=Dominican Immigrants and Social Capital in New York City: A Case Study}}</ref>

In ''Quisqueya on the Hudson: The Transnational Identity of Dominicans in Washington Heights,'' Jorge Duany describes how Washington Heights developed as a "transnational community", continually defined by its connection to the [[Dominican Republic]].<ref name=Quisqueya>{{cite book|last=Duany|first=Jorge|year=2008|edition=2nd|title=Quisqueya on the Hudson: The Transnational Identity of Dominicans in Washington Heights|url=https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=dsi_pubs|publisher=[[CUNY Dominican Studies Institute]]}}</ref> The majority of Dominican immigrants viewed their stay in the United States as purely economically motivated while they remained culturally attached to the Dominican Republic; many also sent [[remittance]]s home, imagining an eventual retirement to the island.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Morrison|first1=Thomas K.|last2=Sinkin|first2=Richard|title=International Migration in the Dominican Republic: Implications for Development Planning|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2546161|journal=The International Migration Review|year=1982|volume=16|issue=4|pages=819–836|doi=10.2307/2546161|jstor=2546161|pmid=12265312|access-date=February 2, 2021|url-access=subscription}}</ref>{{Rp|823}}