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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, in for Brian today. Now we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things with thing number 16, 100 years of West Indian immigration and Caribbean American life in New York City. We're heading into Labor Day weekend, which marks the return of New York City's annual West Indian Day Parade. With that as our news hook, we'll talk about the Caribbean diaspora in New York City and take some of your oral history calls.

Our guest for this is Tyesha Maddox, associate professor of African and African American studies at Fordham University and the author of A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity. Professor Maddox will help us explore how the concept of a shared West Indian identity came to be, as well as the importance of mutual aid societies and other associations that incubated political activism in New York City. We'll also talk about some of the people who left their lasting political, personal, or artistic legacies on the city. Professor Maddox, welcome to WNYC. It's great to have you here.

Tyesha Maddox: Thank you so much for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we can take your oral histories of the Caribbean diaspora in New York City. We invite you to call in and share stories of some of the West Indian New Yorkers who are significant to you. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text us. Professor Maddox, how far back can New York's Caribbean diaspora be traced?

Tyesha Maddox: I think that's a really important question because when we tend to think of Caribbean immigration to New York City, we generally think about the period after 1960 where we see a large boom of Caribbean immigration, but we've had early waves of Caribbean immigration in the 19th century, as early as the 19th century. Right after emancipation in the Caribbean, we see some movement to the-- not the United States yet, but to the northern region of the country.

Then we see a significant boom, I would say, in the early 1900s. That's when we see a significant and what historians like to call the first wave of Caribbean immigration. In my book, I look at this period between 1890 and 1940 specifically for that reason, to focus on this earlier period that's often not discussed as frequently of Caribbean immigration, who made really significant contributions to the American landscape and American history.

Brigid Bergin: Can you talk a little bit more about that period and what was the impetus to immigrate here?

Tyesha Maddox: Yes. There were lots of reasons we see Caribbean immigrants moving. The number one reason that continues to be a reason for immigration, we see climate change, natural disasters, we see job opportunities that were available in the US. Also, this is a period when we're talking about the early 20th century, a period where there were very lax immigration rules and how people could move. We see more fluidity and movement, especially with people of the Caribbean.

We see movement throughout Central America, South America. Those were where early Caribbean immigrants went for work opportunities, and then eventually, they come to the US through these networks of jobs.

Brigid Bergin: Just to leap through time, getting to the early 20th century, there are a few neighborhoods that have long been home to West Indian communities here in New York City, places like Crown Heights and Flatbush. Has the geographic distribution of Caribbean Americans in New York City been consistent over the last century, or has there been much movement?

Tyesha Maddox: There actually has been a lot of movement, especially when we talk about Afro-Caribbean immigrants who tended to live in areas where Black Americans lived. In the early 20th century, we see a lot of movement in the Sugar Hill region, which is what is now Lincoln Center, actually, where Fordham is located. We see a lot of communities of Black immigrants living in Harlem, especially in that early period that I look at in my book.

Around the end of the Harlem Renaissance that came with high rent prices, overcrowding, we see movement to Brooklyn for a lot of Caribbean immigrants. That's when we see the movement into areas such as Bed-Stuy, then bleeding into Crown Heights, further into Flatbush and Canarsie, and areas like that. More modern Caribbean immigration, we see areas like Forest Hill, Queens, that have large Caribbean populations, especially a Guyanese contingent. We also see lots of Caribbean immigrants in the Bronx, in the West Bronx as well.

Brigid Bergin: The title of your book, again, is A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity. You discuss the importance of mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in this period here in New York. How did these groups emerge and what function did they serve?

Tyesha Maddox: These are groups that had started post-emancipation, actually, in the Caribbean. They weren't necessarily called mutual aid or benevolent association, but they were friendly societies, and they served as support systems or networks for recently freed people post-slavery in the Caribbean. Caribbean immigrants who were coming to the US often brought these ideas of mutual aid and collective action with them to the US, and they formed these mutual aid societies or benevolent associations to serve as welcoming committees for newly arrived immigrants.

It helped connect already-established immigrants with recently arrived immigrants, and so basically built these social and kinship networks for immigrants, helping them guide themselves through living in a new city. The Caribbean, as we know, is very different from New York City. In many cases, it was a culture shock on many levels for Caribbean immigrants. The mutual aid society served as a buffer to help them acclimate to US society.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we want to hear your oral histories on the Caribbean diaspora in New York City. We want your calls, to hear your stories of some of the West Indian New Yorkers who are significant to you. The number, again, is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call or text. We're going to start things off with Janet in Harlem. Janet, thanks for calling WNYC.

Janet: My pleasure. I love this show.

Brigid Bergin: What is your-- Go ahead

Janet: I'm sure somebody is writing about the West Indian immigrant experience.

Brigid Bergin: Let's hear your--

Janet: Okay. My story, there is actually a picture of my grandmother in Ellis Island. Many people do not connect the West Indian immigration to what was happening in Ellis Island, and I was really disturbed by that. I found an article right before the Ellis Island Museum opened, and I realized there's a picture of my mother's cousin. I went in, and it turned out my family immigrated from both Trinidad and Barbados in 1918 and 1905.

The story of my grandparents was that my grand uncle, Charles [unintelligible 00:08:22], was a journalist in Trinidad, writing against the colonial system. They basically told him he had no future. He came to New York in 1918, but the opportunities for a Black man were limited. He went to City College, then Howard Medical School, became a doctor at age 40, wrote for Marcus Garvey's newsletter, and also was involved with the Pan-African movement for liberation of all British colonies.

I really think it's important that people understand that our history is the history of immigration and how we settled in Harlem and how we made an influence on the political and social life of Harlem during the '20s and teens. There's an excellent book called Blood Relations, West Indian experience in Harlem from 1900 to 1930, and I highly recommend that everybody read that book.

Brigid Bergin: Janet, thank you for that wonderful call. I want to give Professor Maddox a chance to ask any follow-up questions or respond to that.

Tyesha Maddox: Actually, thank you so much, Janet. I feel like I need to interview you and learn more about your family's history.

Janet: [unintelligible 00:09:38] [crosstalk] I want to talk to you.

Tyesha Maddox: Yes, I would love to connect with you because this is exactly the reason that I'm studying this earlier period because we often don't connect Caribbean immigration with this period of Ellis Island and being the founding of American history. It's actually really funny you brought up Blood Relations. Irma Watkins-Owens was my dissertation mentor and my advisor. She was also at Fordham University, and so I worked very closely with her. That book is the Bible. I highly recommend it for anyone who's interested in looking at this early period of Caribbean immigration. That one and mine, of course. [laughs]

Brigid Bergin: Of course, by all means. Janet, if you hang on on the line, one of the producers will get your contact info so that we can pass it on to Professor Maddox. Let's go to Desiree in Brooklyn. Desiree, thanks for calling.

Desiree: Hi. Good morning. My story, or my family's story is, like the previous caller, I've been doing research, genealogy research on my family for some time now. We do have relatives-- My great uncle-- sorry, great-great uncle, great-great aunt, and another great-great uncle who came over through Ellis Island around the time of World War I, one had a store in Harlem that he had for many years. I've been following them through the censuses and stuff like that. Another one was an elevator operator in Harlem.

They settled in Harlem, whereas comparatively, my grandma, both grandmothers came over in the 1960s, late 1960s with the domestic workers program, and they settled in Brooklyn. They're both deceased now, but that enabled my father and my mother both to eventually come up from Barbados to join them and us and so on and so forth. I also have family that worked in the farm workers program in the 1940s and '50s. They would come up from Barbados annually to pick oranges, to do other agricultural work in different states in the US, and then go back and return yearly to do that. My grandfather did it and my one other great uncle also did.

Brigid Bergin: Desiree, a question, and I apologize if you said this and I missed it, but how did you do some of this research on your family and what prompted you to do it?

Desiree: I guess I'm sort of the family genealogist. I've been working on my family tree for about 15 to 20 years now. I do it with Ancestry, with FamilySearch. I used to go back to Barbados to pull their archival records, but now a lot of it is digitized, so I do it online through familysearch.org. I've also done DNA testing, which has enabled me to find out additional information about our links and stuff like that. It's time-consuming, but it's also very fascinating.

Brigid Bergin: It is fascinating. Thank you so much for your call. Again, Professor Maddox, what are your impressions of that?

Tyesha Maddox: I think that's amazing that you're doing that kind of work on your family and your family's history. That's really awesome. I also think it's really great that nowadays that we have access to the archives. Back in the day, we'd have to go to the countries and sit on microfilm. Now a lot of it you can look up online, so it just makes it more accessible for everyone. I think also a really good point that both of the callers brought up is this aspect of work and the reason that many Caribbean immigrants were pulled into the US and saw the US as a place of opportunity for these job opportunities.

Also important to point out is that even though they were coming for these opportunities, they were in many cases denied because of the times they were denied work in their chosen field or their professional careers, and so they often had to take other jobs. It was funny that Desiree brought up elevator operators because I spend a lot of time talking about elevator operators and my students are like, "What's an elevator operator?" [laughs] You can't even imagine a time when you couldn't just push the button. Those were often a lot of the jobs that Caribbean men took in the early nineteens, nineteen-teens, and 1920s.

Also the domestic work programs, that is what brought a lot of Caribbean women and the networks of domestic workers that brought a lot of Caribbean women to the US, especially to Harlem in that period.

Brigid Bergin: Linking back to one of my earlier questions as we were talking about some of those kinship groups, benevolent associations, women played a really significant role. It's striking that also our callers so far have been women talking about their stories. Can you say a little bit more about the role of women in these organizations and then hopefully tell us a little bit of your own story?

Tyesha Maddox: Yes. Women actually were often the majority of participants in these organizations. Women tend to be traditionally the harbingers of culture and passing on cultural traditions, and so we saw a lot of female leadership in these organizations. They were really important at this time because it was one of the few places, especially in a period where women didn't even have the right to vote or hold political office. Women were holding executive board positions, serving as president and vice president, and running these organizations.

They were the backbones in terms of organizing, programming, and just doing the day-to-day work of the organizations. They served as really important, I think, leadership training grounds for women.

Brigid Bergin: How has the concept of a shared West Indian identity developed and really evolved since some of those early waves of Caribbean immigration that you're talking about?

Tyesha Maddox: I think it's really important to remember that many of these immigrants who are coming at the turn of the century, they didn't necessarily see themselves as Caribbean. For many of them, someone from Trinidad, it was their first time meeting someone from Jamaica. It's not until they're in the diaspora, until they're in the US that they recognize this shared sense of culture and identity. It's the diaspora that tends to foster these shared traditions and values.

We see, initially, many of the organizations are very island-specific. You'd have the Bermuda Benevolent Association or the Antigua Progressive Society. Then later, as maybe a decade or so goes by, then you see West Indian Mutual Aid Society or the Caribbean this. As they are in the diaspora and they are living in close quarters, sharing the same kind of work, then they recognize the shared identity and the shared experience of Caribbean, of West Indian, especially people from the Anglophone Caribbean who have a very strong sense of, at this time, they're still British colonies, so a very strong sense of British colonial pride or resentment that they rally around.

That's where you begin in the diaspora to see these shared identities and the shared values.

Brigid Bergin: Just one note of clarification. Are the terms West Indian and Caribbean interchangeable the way we've been using them?

Tyesha Maddox: Yes. There has been a movement, I've heard, of people who see West Indian as a negative, but within the Caribbean, the term West Indian is used. It's, of course, a misnomer. Christopher Columbus thought he was sailing to the East Indies and he ended up in the West Indies, and so he named it West Indies. We see the term West Indian being used even today. My mom's family is from St. Lucia, and I'll see they'll write on the mail, "St. Lucia, BWI, British West Indies." The term is still used, and it's used interchangeably with West Indian.

Brigid Bergin: Let's take another caller. Let's go to Mark in Lefferts Garden. Mark, thanks for calling.

Mark: Hi. Good morning.

Brigid Bergin: Good morning. What's your oral history?

Mark: I have an interesting history. I've been here, wow, since 1979. Do the math. That's quite many years. I'm Guyanese by birth, came here with my family, immigrated as a child with my mom and dad. One of the things I wanted to add was, in the '70s, it was quite difficult for middle and upper-class or successful Guyanese in business to emigrate because a lot of Americans don't realize that countries like that don't just let you leave.

You need a lot of tax allowance, police allowance, a lot of government things to keep you, to keep their talent in the country because this is something that more affluent or families that went away to school-- My dad went to piloting school in the UK that was paid for by the Guyanese government, and part of that contract is that you come back and work for the government, which he did for many years and was quite successful. When we left, my dad went away to Norway on a business trip, and my mom put us-- and packed our bags and sold the house and everything in about just under two weeks.

We flew to see my grandmother, who had a military career in the Guyanese army and then further went on to be a secretary to the Guyanese Ambassador to the US at the time. She had gotten residency and was able to sponsor us, but the country wouldn't allow us to leave as a family. We went on a tourist visa with my mom, and then my dad on his business trip never came back, which was something that many Guyanese had to do to be able to leave the country successfully.

Brigid Bergin: Mark, thank you for that call and for that story. Professor Maddox, I see you nodding. What are some of your thoughts?

Tyesha Maddox: Thank you so much for sharing that story. I think that's a modern-day issue that we're seeing, essentially a brain drain of successful people leaving the Caribbean and not coming back. That leads to issues that we see in the Caribbean now with a lack of young people who are educated and talented not being there to contribute to the country.

Brigid Bergin: Professor Maddox, we have a listener who texted, "I'm a Trini immigrant. Two of my favorite Caribbean New Yorkers are Shirley Chisholm and Hazel Scott. What is the speaker's Caribbean immigrant story, if any?"

Tyesha Maddox: Oh, yes. I was born here in Brooklyn, which I like to call Caribbean New York, the capital of the Caribbean outside of the Caribbean. My mom is from St. Lucia in the British West Indies. She immigrated right in time for high school, and every summer, even though-- My dad's family is African American. They're from North and South Carolina, so a different migration story but migration nonetheless to New York. New York serves as the meeting point for West Indians and African Americans.

My mom would send me home to St. Lucia every summer. As soon as school was out till right before school started, around this time, I would be in St. Lucia. I felt really connected in many ways to my-- Even though being born in the US, I felt very connected to my Caribbean heritage, but it wasn't really until I went away to college and I took Caribbean history courses that I really became interested in our history and culture and had a passion for studying and learning and writing about Caribbean history.

Brigid Bergin: That listener also texted some of her favorite Caribbean New Yorkers. The great Shirley Chisholm got a shout-out. Many Caribbean Americans have been important political leaders in New York City politics over the decades.

Tyesha Maddox: And continuing now also. [chuckles]

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. The Clarke family in Brooklyn. Congresswoman Yvette Clarke. Previously her mother, Una Clarke. Let's listen to a little clip from one of those leaders, Shirley Chisholm, from our archives.

Shirley Chisholm: I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman and I'm equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests.

Brigid Bergin: That, again, of course, was Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to Congress, the first Black candidate for a major party's nomination for the President of the United States. Professor Maddox, can you talk a little bit about Shirley Chisholm's West Indian roots and how they may have shaped her politics?

Tyesha Maddox: Yes. I think really interesting that Shirley Chisholm was born here in New York but spent her formative years as a child growing up in Barbados. She has often said in her book that that upbringing, her West Indian upbringing, really helped to shape who she was as a person and helped guide her in her political career. I also think, I imagine now, if she was still alive, how thrilled she would be about Kamala Harris being the Democratic presidential nominee.

I just think it's like full circle, especially now that we're talking about the anniversary of Shirley Chisholm and then Kamala Harris sealing the Democratic nomination, which is something that she wanted to do. I think it's just really amazing that we've come full circle.

Brigid Bergin: Can you talk just for a moment about the relationship between Caribbean Americans and African Americans in New York and how that's evolved over the last hundred years?

Tyesha Maddox: Yes, absolutely. As I was saying, even within my own family, my dad's family is from North and South Carolina. My dad was born here in New York. His family is African American. My mom and my mom's family is West Indian, and that was something that got me really interested in how not only-- because we're all Black. We're all African American, but how do we become Black in this country? This idea of identity and shared values was something that was always really interesting to me.

In my own studies and doing work, I saw that immediately West Indian immigrants folded into the Black community, it wasn't always without tension. There, of course, were many issues that arose from that. There were similar themes that we see today about this idea of West Indian immigrants taking African American jobs, trying to fill in in these positions. There were some cases where white Americans often would say, "Oh, well, we prefer West Indians." That also helped instigate some of the tensions amongst the group.

For the most part, I'd say we see a lot of unity with Caribbean immigrants and African Americans, especially if we look at something like the Harlem Renaissance. There were so many influential West Indian immigrants who were part of the Harlem Renaissance helping to create culture and music and art alongside African Americans during this period. I think that's really important, the ways in which Caribbean immigrants and African Americans worked together to create this shared Black identity, this African American identity.

When we look at some of the great African American leaders, many of them had West Indian heritage. Like even W. E. B. Du Bois, his family was of Haitian ancestry. We have many of these cases in which we see African Americans and West Indians working together.

Brigid Bergin: I want to thank all of our callers who shared their oral histories and texted their stories. This is the latest chapter of our centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. My guest has been Tyesha Maddox, associate professor of African and African American studies at Fordham University and author of the book A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity. Professor Maddox, thanks so much for coming in and joining me.

Tyesha Maddox: Thank you so much for having me.

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