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Witness History: Puerto Rican attack at the US Capitol

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12/01/2021 GMT

Puerto Rican attack at the US Capitol

BBC World Service - Witness History, Puerto Rican attack at the US Capitol

How independence campaigners opened fire in Congress in 1954, wounding five US law-makers

In March 1954, a group of Puerto Rican militants opened fire from the public gallery of the US Congress in an effort to promote their fight for independence for the American territory. Five members of the House of Representatives were wounded in an attack which made headlines around the world and turned its leader, Lolita Lebron, into a nationalist heroine on the Caribbean Island. Simon Watts has been listening to archive accounts of the incident.

PHOTO: Lolita Lebron and two Puerto Rican colleagues are arrested after the attack (US Congress/Corbis/Getty Images)

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