Migration After Arrival

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to Strictly Facts, a Guide to Caribbean History and Culture, hosted by me, Dr. Alexandria Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics, and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture. Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, where we explore the stories, people, and ideas that shape the Caribbean and its diaspora. I'm your host, Alexandria, and migration is the topic for today's conversation. It's one that we talk about a lot, but obviously approaching it from different facets and aspects. I think oftentimes when we think of migration, we think of movement, of the people leaving from one place and beginning again somewhere else. But what is sometimes overlooked is what happens after arrival, how people survive, how they build community, and how they create home in unfamiliar places. Today's episode centers on one of the most important yet often under-discussed aspects of Caribbean immigration history, and that is mutual aid societies and benevolent associations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Caribbean migrants arriving in places like New York faced racial discrimination, economic hardship, housing insecurity, and the challenges of navigating life in a new country with limited institutional support. In response, they turned to one another through organizations rooted in older Caribbean traditions and collective care. Immigrants built networks that helped people build financial stability, preserve culture, and navigate the emotional realities of migration. But these organizations were about far more than just survival. They became spaces where Caribbean people forged new identities, maintained connections to home, organized politically, celebrated culture, and so on and so forth. There were, in many ways, living examples of what it means to build community through collective responsibility and

Why Study Early Caribbean New York

Speaker 2:06

care. And so joining us to dig deeper into the origins and significance and lasting legacy of Caribbean mutual aid organizations is my friend, Dr. Tyesha Maddox, associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at Fordham University, who focuses primarily on this, especially in her 2024 book, A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity. So, Dr. Maddox, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. Tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself. Where is near and dear to you in the Caribbean, and what inspired your interest in Caribbean migration, race, and transnational communities?

Speaker 1 2:47

Thank you so much for that really beautiful introduction and combination of the work of the book and my interest in Caribbean history. That was really, really nice. So I think you summed it up, but I'm really interested in this idea of a movement of people, particularly of Caribbean people, to the US in this early period. I think when we tend to think of Caribbean immigration, we tend to think of this period post-1960, where we see like the largest boom of Caribbean immigrants. But I was really interested in this earlier uh turn of the century period. One to establish this idea that Caribbean immigrants had been a part of American history, especially this early American history, helping build places like New York and Harlem, um, which are particularly dear to me because I'm from Brooklyn. Um I was born and raised. My mom is from St. Lucia, the Caribbean, where I spent many of my summers, and I continue to spend summers, uh, now willingly. When I was a kid, I don't know what was wrong with me, but now I'd take to go down there myself. And I appreciate it even more. Um, but my mom came to the US um as a teenager to come to high school in New York. Um, and she met my dad, who his family is from North and South Carolina. So migrants also, but from the South, the rural South, um, who also came to New York for better opportunities, better education. And I was really always interested in this idea of migration and movement, why people move, what happens when they move, um, how they build community, how they um sustain themselves in these new environments. Um I was also really interested in this idea of blackness and how blackness is a multiplicity of things. Um, my dad's family, as I mentioned, is African American from North and South Carolina. And they were black, but black in a very different way than how my mom was black. Um, my mom, of course, identifies um as a black Caribbean woman, but it was very different from the way in which my dad's family identified with blackness. And so that was something that also really interested me, this idea of having these various ethnicities and ideas of black identity and how those come together and converge, particularly in a place like Brooklyn, where we have people from the Black diaspora from everywhere, from Central and South America, from Africa, from the Caribbean, and how we all come together and form this New York black identity. And so that was something that was really interesting to me. And for my master's thesis, I was trying to think of how am I gonna put these ideas together? And so I was like, I'm gonna do something on African American and Caribbean social and cultural identity. I don't know, I'll figure it out. Went to the Schomburg because that's the place you go when you're studying anything on blackness. So I was like, I'm gonna go to the Schomburg. So I went down for the weekend to the Schaumburg. Uh, I went to a school in Ithaca, New York. So I drove down for the weekend and I spent three days in the Schaumburg, and I just kept coming across these Caribbean Mutual Aid Records, uh, Mutual Aid Society's benevolent associations. And at the time, I I knew what the practice of mutual aid was, but I didn't know the actual term for mutual aid. And I also didn't know what these organizations were. And so the more I read about them, the more they kept coming up. There were so many of them in the records I found about 66 distinct um groups between 1898 and um 1240. And so the more I kept looking at them, I was like, okay, this is the project, this is what I want to work on. I want to work on how the mutual societies were really important for helping Caribbean immigrants uh sustain themselves to find community, um, to take care of themselves in a very hostile environment, particularly in this early period of the 1900s, where Jim Crow racism is raging, um, not just in the South, but also in the North as well, where they're trying to figure out how they create community with African Americans who they're living with, they're working with, they're marrying, they're having children with. And so these mutual aid societies and benominant associations just kept coming up as the center point for how they're able to create these communities and how they're able to sustain themselves. And so I think that's how the project started. That's how it morphed. And then it just kept giving to me because not only did I see these societies as really important for helping immigrants settle and find their place in American society, but I also saw them as important for women because many of the members, more than half of the membership, were usually women. Um, women on a lot of the planning and executive committee um work of these organizations. And this was the time in the early 1900s where women didn't have many opportunities and outlets for leadership. And we see in these organizations, we also see uh members of these organizations using these uh mutual aid societies and beloved associations as platforms for political careers, um, where they go on um to use these leadership skills that they gain, to use these uh connections that they form with other members to then launch political careers or go into political activism full-time. And so I just really saw these organizations as like just so essential to how we think about this early period of Caribbean immigration. And I think we can't talk about this movement without talking about these societies that Caribbean Americans were a part of.

Speaker 8:44

Thank you for that introduction.

What Mutual Aid Really Means

Speaker 8:46

There are a few ways we tend to think about aid, right? Um, or maybe financial support might be another way. I think from an informal standpoint, we think of um cooperatives like Padna, right? Which I've, you know, previously discussed on the show where those are more so, you know, you and maybe an auntie, a friend and whatever, or you know, a community sort of sense get together to sort of pool funds in this way, right? Or we tend to think of AIDS in like a mass, like Red Cross, you know, sort of like big picture type of situation. Um, but could you, I guess, sort of define what mutual aid societies are and these benevolent associations and how they are certainly a practice that comes out of um Caribbean traditions from even before these migrants eventually moved to places like New York?

Speaker 1 9:36

So I think um one distinguishing factor between um mutual aid, particularly in the Caribbean sense, and traditional like philanthropy or charity work is that it's egalitarian in terms of there's no top-down. Um everyone's at the same level and everyone is providing aid to each other. And so they don't think of mutual aid as doing charity work or as being a trickle-down effect, right? Um, the mutual aid that they're thinking of is one in which they're working as a cooperative to fill the needs of the organization. And so we see, particularly with these organizations, as the memberships need to change, so do the uh functions of the organization because they're literally at service to the members. And so it's a collective effort amongst members for each other. And I see it as something that's different from this idea of um just charity work, right? Where you go into a community and you provide something for them and then leave. These functions that these organizations serve for each other were very um intimate because they knew the needs of the membership, um, because the needs are what were driving the organization, the objectives of the organization. Um, Caribbean Mutual Aid societies in America, I argue, are an offshoot of uh Caribbean-friendly societies, which were organizations that were formed somewhat during um the slavery period, but then also we really see a boom post-emancipation in the Caribbean after 1838. We see tons of Caribbean um friendly societies forming. And these friendly societies basically took on the needs of Caribbean, newly free people who were no longer useful to their um former slaveholders, right? Um, and to the British government. Um, that's also another thing. Uh my book centers on the British Caribbean, the former British Caribbean. But yeah, so these friendly societies take on this idea of helping um the newly free find employment, um, helping them sustain themselves. There is a little bit of this idea of respectability politics and proving to the British government that they can be uh independent and take care of themselves. And so you see a lot of um some of the activism that they have surrounding that idea of um being upstanding British citizens and falling into this idea of this Victorian British sense of citizenship. But one of the major benefits that I see that connect the Caribbean family societies and the Caribbean-American benevolent associations and UJE societies, are this idea of like a burial or funeral fund. And that was something that was ubiquitous amongst all of the groups, from the ones that were formed in 1830 to the ones that are formed in 1930. There's this idea of having a fund to um properly buried and dead members. And I think this is a corrective, uh, particularly in the friendly societies, to the indignity of slavery, in which they were not able to perform their um traditional funeral rights. And so they wanted to make sure you were not able to live with indignity during your time on earth, then at least in the afterlife, you will have this proper burial. So there's really this importance on proper funeral rights. And so we see this in the funding societies of the Caribbean. We also see this very heavily emphasized these funeral funds in Caribbean American Beach Societies and Benevolent Associations. Also a carryover, we see um providing aid during illness and injuries. I like to argue that this was early workers' cock before that was a thing where if you got sick, um, they would come and like provide money for you for a certain amount of time to help you since you weren't being paid if you weren't working. Um, there was also maternity benefits in some of the organizations for women, um, which I think is really advanced and beyond their time. I think that's amazing. These are all practices that we see, and I talk about it in the book in West African societies, um, title societies and secret societies where funeral rights were really important, and that's also a carryover. And so I think these friendly societies, and then in turn, the Caribbean-American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations are taking these longer traditions of mutual aid and care, collective care from these West African traditions and then transferring them to each place. And so as Caribbean immigrants move out of the Caribbean, they then take these organizations and bring them with them to the US. I often we get asked, particularly um in New York, because there are a lot of Jewish mutual aid and Chinese mutual aid societies, if it was just a copy or imitation of those organizations. And I very adamantly say, no, it's not a copy. This is the practice that Caribbean people had been doing uh since their arrival in the Caribbean, because of these West African traditions that they had of collective care.

Funeral Funds And Collective Care Roots

Speaker 15:10

That's I think a really amazing point because I think on the immediate sense, we might think of, oh, this is a Caribbean diaspora thing, right? Because we're moving from the region to the global north, right? But as you're extending for us, this is really a black diasporic tradition that has been carried throughout the triangular slave trade, throughout, you know, emancipation, and then of course moving north, whether that's New York and you know other similar places. We even see like some of the same uh terminology.

Speaker 1 15:42

So for instance, isusu or susu are are terms that they use in bagging, like uh like a padna. Yeah. Um I'm trying to think of the other names. There's so many names for it. It's so funny because as a kid, like I remember my mom being part of the susu. I was at Catholic school, and in order for her to pay my tuition, she was part of this susu that was like to pay the tuition. And I didn't really know what it was. I was like, you're giving these people your money. Do you know them? So this is like a a way, like a collective savings plan. Um that we see in West African tradition, the name is ESUSU, and then we have the scene carry over in the Caribbean, and then we bring it to the US. And so we see the connections there, even through like the terminology. Certainly.

Speaker 16:32

And responsible, as you said, right, for setting people to school, to for helping people buy homes, all right.

Speaker 1 16:40

Sending money and aid home to the Caribbean. I think it also really shows like the level of closeness amongst these Caribbean immigrants, because if you're giving your money to someone, you have to trust these people. Um, and so it creates these intimate connections with each other and this trust with each other because you don't forget these people that you're in the Susu or partner with, they become part of your family and they become part of your community that helps you.

Speaker 17:10

I want us for a moment to sort of underscore the massive number of mutual aid societies that you brought up, right? You said that through doing research at the Schomburg, you've found like 66 of them. And I think while we've talked about the needs, like, you know, what were the actual needs, so the funeral rites or financial hardship, et cetera, I think just that proliferation of the number of societies really demonstrates not only the number of people and our abilities to come together, um, but I think the importance of just collective organizing as a people, especially people coming to a new place. So could you speak a little bit to that? And also in true Caribbean fashion, it wasn't always just financial hardship that we're rallying for and funeral rites, it's also a social gathering and all these other things that I think really helped from having read your book, Maintain Caribbean Identity in the US. So could you speak a little bit to that as well?

Speaker 1 18:10

Yeah, absolutely. As you mentioned, uh, a lot of these organizations they serve these these really important purposes of uh raising money collectively for various reasons um to help provide uh funeral funds or having sticked in visiting a committee. The could be people, so they're also gonna have to find there were trips that they took, social outings, um, there were parties, lots of parties. Uh another um function and I think an aspect of these organizations that I think are really important were the way in which they kept Caribbean immigrants culturally connected to the community. Um, so they would have, for instance, Barbados organization would have Barbados Day uh celebrations where they would play physic music and have traditional dance and um bring the foods of the community, right? To these organizations. And I think that's particularly important for someone who is in a city that they're not familiar with, that they don't have access to those parts of home. Um, I cannot imagine. I've grown up in New York my whole life, but I can't imagine even when I see my cousins who come up from Florida or who come from the Caribbean, they come to New York and just surviving a week in the cold. I can't imagine how these people felt being away from home where there's just plenty of sunshine, plenty of salt water, and not having that around them. So I think these organizations were really important for building that morale, for keeping them connected to the culture, for giving them access to their Caribbean identity in ways that they weren't able to get in New York proper, especially in these early periods where there weren't established Caribbean communities yet. Now we have Flatbush, we have uh the Bronx, we have all these areas in Queens, right? Where that is established. And you can go to these places. Like if I want real tea, if I want doubles, like I know where I can go. But that wasn't a thing before. And so these organizations really help Caribbean immigrants fill that need that they had. Um, I think really importantly, um, some of the organizations also had children's auxiliaries. And so for Caribbean children who might have been too young when they left the Caribbean or who had been born in the US, right? It was also a way to teach them about their culture and to keep them connected to the culture by having these dances, by listening to the music, by um taking these trips together, right? Um, I think they were really important for a lot of these social aspects. In this early period, we see a lot of young people coming. Um, a lot of young women actually were coming to do domestic work um in New York City. And a lot of them were single women or women who had left their families behind, their children and their partners. And so it was really important for them to build this community with each other, um, to have someone there for them. And I think these organizations really fill those needs in terms of that. So, yeah, so it was important for the reasons I mentioned initially, the funeral rites and helping each other through disasters, but it's also really helpful for socializing. Um, there were so many bidwis parties. I was reading about bidwis. I had to look it up, and I was like, oh, this is gonna show my when I tell people, you know, Korean people, they can multitask.

Speaker 21:44

Yeah, certainly. We can fundraise and we can also, it could also be a dominoes tournament.

Parties Identity And Everyday Support

Speaker 21:52

Um one thing it that you brought up as you were talking about Flatbush and other parts of New York, right? I think virtual. All of us, you know, I'm sure tuning in are like, yeah, New York Caribbean people goes hand in hand, right? Yeah. But to think about a time and place in New York when it wasn't like that necessarily, or right, like where it's the early beginnings of that time period. But also, this is all happening while New York is in the midst of things like the Harlem Renaissance, right? When the UNIA is becoming huge within the US and Garveyism is really taking over as a political movement, as you alluded to in your own family's history, Great Migration, all of these things, right? And so could you sort of underscore for us the impact? Because I I think one thing about this story is that you could have also done this like for a UK pro like this could have been a London project, right? Um, but sort of, but also would have worked differently, which is what I'm sort of trying to get at here, right? That like what is the sort of particular nuance around doing a project like this in New York where these communities are forming, they're uplifting one another, but also there's so much going on um in New York from like a black liberation standpoint. Um, how does that sort of unfold and also like sort of help Caribbean immigrants understand themselves as black people within the US context?

Speaker 1 23:15

So I think that's a great question. One of the reasons I undertook this earlier period, and I was so adamant about looking at this earlier period, was for that reason exactly. Harlem becomes Harlem and what it is and what we know of as the Harlem Renaissance because of these Caribbean immigrants, not in spite of, not as addition, it's because of them. Um, and I think that's something that I really wanted to highlight. When I wrote my dissertation, the title was Invisible Immigrants. Um, this idea of looking at these Caribbean immigrants who are black, who are English speaking, and so they don't necessarily fit the mold of this idea of what we think of when we think of immigrants, and as a way they kind of like default into African American culture. And so when we talk about a lot of these really important, prominent people in African American history, we don't even acknowledge sometimes that they are of Caribbean descent or that they are Caribbean immigrants themselves. That was one of the driving forces for looking at this earlier period. Because I really wanted to establish this idea that we would not have these black communities, these really important historical black communities or movements if we did not have these Caribbean immigrants who were coming. I think it's really important to highlight uh these early moments of Caribbean radicalism. And that's what I was really excited to talk about with this project, um, the ways in which Gargy ignited not only Caribbean immigrants, right? But also was igniting African Americans to be more political, to embrace this idea of black is beautiful, to um want to have these ideas of self-determination. The new Negro movement comes out of these conversations and this global um black desperate talk um that's happening amongst transnationally amongst black people in the Caribbean, in the UK, um with Guardi in Central America, right? And so I think that I really wanted to highlight this period for that reason to show that Caribbean immigrants were really important and significant in helping build these communities and these really important junctures in African American history that we tend to only think of as African Americans. And I want to tumble that idea by looking at these Caribbean immigrants and saying, not just saying, oh look, hey, they're from the Caribbean, but also to explain where they're coming from, like their mindset and how they become involved in these radical politics through these organizations. I think it's really important um to note that these Caribbean immigrants were seeing what was happening. One, they were part of these movements. So they were moving to Harlem at the same time that African Americans from New York and from the South are moving into Harlem. So they're helping to build these communities. Irma Watkett Owens, who is my mentor and my goddess, wrote the book Black Relations, uh, or Blood Relations, sorry, that looks at this block in Harlem, in which Caribbean immigrants are coming, African immigrants, um, African, American immigrants from the North and South are coming into the neighborhood and helping build Harlan. And so I wanted to build on that idea um by looking at the more broader picture of it. I also wanted to look at it through the lens of the mutual aid societies because I think that was the key in helping these Caribbean immigrants because they're also working with African Americans through these organizations. And also many of the Caribbean immigrants who are part of these UJ Society, benevolent associations, are also connected to other African American organizations. And so that's where we see a lot of the cross cooperation happening. So as I'm looking through the records of, for instance, the American West Indian Ladies Aid Society, they're working with African-American Benevolent Associations, African American women's clubs, with the ladies' auxiliary of the secret car porter, right? And so we see these connections happening through these organizations. Hopefully that answered the question.

Speaker 27:35

It did. No, it definitely did. I think that's definitely why I earnestly asked it to sort of get back to what I was saying in my in me forming the question, right? It would have looked a lot differently in terms of the makeup in a place like London, right? Yeah. It would be it would be care Caribbean mutual aid societies, but it would be Caribbean sort of only, more or less, right? Whereas in a place like New York, you're seeing that um, you know, that sort of black diaspora context between Caribbean Americans and African Americans. Yeah.

Speaker 1 28:07

Can I also add one note? I also wanted to add that one of the things that I felt like I was doing differently in this book um than in some of the greats who I've read before and then who I literally stand on the shoulders of, um, is that I troubled this idea of Caribbean community or Caribbean immigrants, because I am arguing in this work that they don't see themselves as part of a Caribbean community yet. That doesn't happen until they arrive in the diaspora. Um for some immigrants it does. For some of the immigrants who are coming from Panama, who are working on the canal, who have maybe had worked on the railroads in uh Central America, they were seeing starting to form these like identities, these uh or communities or links. But for many of the migrants who are coming, it's their first migration. And someone who was from Jamaica had not met someone from Trinidad before. And so they were not seeing themselves as connected um in terms of the Caribbean identity. That doesn't happen until they get to um New York. And so I'm arguing that these organizations are also really important for helping them form that identity as well to see themselves as Caribbean immigrants. Um a lot of the earlier books just automatically default, see them as or write them as Caribbean immigrants, but that's a process that happens and that isn't often talked about. And I think we see it in the formation. I talk about it in the book. We see it in the formation of the organizations, right? Where there is a Barbados society or a Bermudian society, uh Trinidad in this, an antiguaness. And then we start to see the formation of Japan, West Indian or Caribbean in it, because then realizing, oh wait, we have these like really cult cultural ties, this West Indian that brings us together. And so I think that is something that I do differently in this book, is that I trouble this idea of a Caribbean immigrant automatically forming as soon as they step off the boat onto Ellis Island, where they're like, Yes, my Jamaican St. Lucian, we are all connected. No, they don't see themselves that way at first. Um, and so I talk about that and I trouble that idea on in the text as well. I think that's also really important to when we're talking about this identity. They have a lot going on. They're forming a Caribbean identity, they're forming a black identity, they're forming this African-American identity. There's a lot happening um and a lot of a thought process that's going on amongst them as they arrive and spend time in the US.

What Changed From Then To Now

Speaker 30:56

Thank you for that. And I'd love to get your thoughts on this because I know that there's a point at in the book where you like nod to um, you know, things like COVID-19 and other ways, and you know, even we can take this in a sense of thinking about like natural disasters and how those often in the diaspora rally, um, whether that's, you know, to pool funds, etc., in the aftermath of disasters back home. But I I think I just sort of want us to and would love to really get your opinion on where the unity I think has sort of come, or have we lost it a little bit, right? Um, because at least from my understanding and from reading the book, this was like a consistent, you know, the mutual aid organizations and benevolent societies were a regular part of how we worked together. Yeah. Right. Um, whereas today, a little bit, it only seems like there has to be a disaster in a sense, right? Or from even like a maybe slightly different um perspective, I've certainly seen like insert a Kingston High School be like, oh, we're gonna do something to um help uh put a new gate up for the high school or whatever, because it's like an alumni association of people who have moved to the US or something, right? But I feel like taking out the instance of some sort of disaster or a moment like that, I guess my question is sort of two parts, right? Like, what are the continuities really that you see between the practices of those um from the late 19th and early 20th century societies to today? And also like what has sort of been lost or changed over time in a sense?

Speaker 1 32:43

Yeah, I think that's a good question. I'll start for me the easier question is what has been lost or changed. Because I'm I'm still trying to see the ways in which um these societies have passed on. Um, but I would say to answer the last question that you asked about what has changed or what has been lost. One, we don't have as many of these organizations that are still around. I worked with two organizations, particularly with one, um, the Antigua and Barbuda Professive Society. They were formed, I believe, in 1925 or 1930. I'm blinking on the exact bad history, I'm sorry. Um, but they have been able to continue on in terms of one, they still own their building, their original building in Harlan. They were able to rename the street um that they're on on 123rd Street. They were able to co-name the street after one of their founders. They are have a really great way of engaging young people. Um, and so they have a really large membership um because they have social media, they have Facebook, they have a YouTube channel, they have Instagram. Like they're able to connect with young people in a way that I see a lot of the other organizations not being able to do. Um, there's another group called the St. Lucia Eventual Aid, and they also still have their house, but they relocated. So they moved with their membership. So they originally started in Harlem, and then they had a building in Harlem. They sold that building, and once the Caribbean community moved to Brooklyn, where the majority of the Caribbean community started to move towards and center around Brooklyn, they moved also to Brooklyn. And so their house is located in Brooklyn now. But they still have their house. They um recently celebrated like 105 years of existence or something like that, or 100 years of existence. And looking at that organization, they were not able, I think, they're not able to engage with young people in the same way that some of the other organizations were successful in doing. And so what has changed, I think, also is the programming of the organizations. So, particularly when I'm looking at the mutual aid society and the association in the 1920s and 1930s, they're really politically active. They're really involved in what's happening in the politics of the day. And so not only are they social and they have all these other like cultural aspects and functions, but they're also really politically engaged in this period in the 1920s and 30s. And that's the times also that what was happening when we think about what's happening in the 1920s and 30s is understandable. And so the membership, uh, they were having politicians come and like Canvas at their meetings, they were putting up their own members for political parties. And so what I don't see as much in these new organizations, or not these in these new iterations of the same organization, is they're less political in terms of their um their programming. So there are a lot of social aspects. Um, they are really interested in keeping connected to the Caribbean and their in Segan or St. Lucian um heritage in terms of programming. Um, they are also very, still very um interested in charitable contributions, particularly transnationally, um, sending money and aid to the Caribbean, fighting for breast cancer, they do breast cancer walks or um MS research and things, sending money for MS research and things like that. Um, but I don't see the political aspect as much in these newer organizations. I also don't see an emphasis on keeping young people connected. And so I used to argue that the children's auxiliary were really important for two reasons. One, to keep the children culturally connected to the Caribbean. As a first generation born here, I understood the importance. My mom sent me to the Caribbean every summer and was like, you are Caribbean. I was like, I'm American, what are you talking about? And so I see that and I understand the importance of that. And so they had these children's auxiliaries, one to keep the children connected to the culture. But it was also very important succession planning because who is going to take over these organizations when the older people lead or, you know, are retired and or pass away. And so the children's auxiliaries ran their own organizations. They showed them how to serve on an executive board, how to run meetings, how to program, how to do these things. And then once they turn 16, then they automatically move over into the adult groups, right? That keeps the uh organization running and flowing with new membership, right? When we looked at the period of 1924, right? There's a lull in Caribbean immigrants. So we're not always gonna have new members coming in because of, you know, xenophobic uh American immigration laws. So we have these, I think these children's auxiliaries were really important for keeping organizations running and going. I don't see this emphasis on the young people in these newer iterations of these organizations. And I think that would be helpful, right? To keep the membership active, to keep young people involved so that they want to be part of these organizations. Um so that's one. In terms of I I kind of feel the same, I hate to say it, I don't want to sound like pessimistic, but I kind of feel the same way that you do in terms of Seni's um mutual aid effort, mostly in terms of like disaster, a particularly natural disaster, like even when we just had Melissa um in Jamaica, or to go back a few years before, where we saw big mutual aid push um for Maria and Puerto Rico, I don't see it. Um I try to have my ears to the ground, but I'm not seeing it in that in the same ways that um I used to see in looking at these earlier periods. Yeah.

Speaker 39:06

I

Pop Culture And Passing Culture On

Speaker 39:07

want to just underscore the previous point you made, or the penultimate point rather, because I think that challenge of like we have these communities who are coming up, you know, migrating to the US trying to sustain their culture and then very intentionally trying to keep it alive through these children's auxiliaries, right? Which is very counter to the sort of sense where you have to assimilate, right? Um, my mom coming up much later in the 80s was sort of discouraged from speaking in her accent in her school, right? Because they were like, oh, you know, you're a different type of, and then it became a whole xenophobic like sort of story, right? Um, and even to our I will go there because I've certainly heard this. Um, the Caribbean family members that wanted to be like, you're a Yankee, you're not.

Speaker 1 40:01

And I'm like, guys, we should we should embrace every summer that I went back, no matter how many summers I went back, they're like, I understand my 20 is a little different.

Speaker 40:13

I understand, you know, my pato might not sound like yours or whatever. Um, but there I think I think that just to me brought um a sense and intentionality really of keeping the spirit and the culture and our histories alive. Yeah. That I think, especially today, maybe beyond like a music and social media sense, right? Like if you're up here and you know you're in the US, you'll you can you can know the songs and you can know the latest, whatever, um much more sufficiently, I think, due to social media, but that doesn't necessarily translate to I mean it's a part of culture, right? But it's not the only part of culture. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 40:54

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Speaker 40:55

Things like that, I think, really help to sustain us, and as you were saying, right, has sort of le sort of shifted over time um in addition to the politics.

Speaker 1 41:05

I agree. I'm even thinking of my friend who now she also first generation born here in the US, but grew up in Diana. Uh, I think she's eight till she was eight, but then very close connection with the family and uh and her cultural traditions. But she's as her family members are you know aging out and there's less of a connection to Diana, she just had a child herself who's two, and she's thinking of how do I keep him connected, his his father, the African dragon, and she's thinking, like, how do I keep him connected to the culture? I want him to also be part of this and like have this understanding. And so I think I like applaud these Caribbean immigrants who were thinking so far ahead that they were putting five-year-olds and these groups to like keep them like in within the culture to understand that one day they will age it out and these young children will have to take over, or you know, and so I just like applaud the ingenuity of it and the resilience of it. And I'm just like, oh, they're so smart in doing that, right? Um, because they had their eyes on not just what was happening in the present, but like for the future as well.

Speaker 42:19

I will say I have to big up my um podcast producer, Auntie Carrie Ann Reed Brown, because we are working on ways to sustain that for the next generation, right? So um, you know, being able to send kids back home for the summer and all the things, it might not always be available or a possibility, but there are definite ways that um we can maintain those understandings of our tradition. So be on the lookout, people. Um if you don't follow breadfruit media and carry on friends, do so, do so. I fully recommend it. Um I always love to ask this question of all my guests. I think this one to me was a little bit hard because I was like thinking mutual aid, popular culture, but then I kind of came up with my own answer. So I'll I'd love to know what you think, um, just in terms of what are your favorite ways um, you know, Caribbean mutual aid organizations and the work that they do show up in our popular culture today.

Speaker 1 43:17

Oh, my first introduction to this was have you ever read Brown Girl Brown Stones by Paul Morris? Yes. My first book. The first book I read at uh tween, I think I was like 11, that I felt like represented and seen in. She is a daughter of Barbadian immigrants. It's not clear if she is born in New York or if her um she comes at a very young age. Um, but I felt like she was born in Brooklyn. So I would like I I embrace it. Um, daughter of Barbadian immigrants um who is navigating this idea of being Caribbean, but not Caribbean, of being American. But being American. And it was the first time I felt seen in the book. And I was like, oh my gosh, this book is about me. My family's not from Barbados, but it was like close enough to 20-minute flight. And I just felt so seen in that book. But in that book, um, her mother, the Selena, the main antagonist of the book, her mother is part of a Barbadian homeowners association, which functions exactly like the benevolent associations and the mutual aid societies that I talk about. And so it's really interesting to watch how even in this fictional world that Carl Marshall is writing about, but loosely based on her own life, these mutual aid societies come up in the book because they are uh collective rotating uh forms of credit. They are helping each other get down payments for home, they are meeting and having social work, they have scholarships for the young children. And I'm like, this is literally mirroring the work of these mutual aid societies that are happening in the same period. And so I just thought that was so fascinating that it would come up in this book. And so it's the only literary reference that I have in my work that um mentioned Paul Marshall because I think that's like a really important like way in which we see these mutual aid organizations really affect and come up in popular culture. And so for me, that's it. I would I love Paul Marshall. I love that book.

Speaker 45:26

Yeah, I agree, and one so you know, I think apt, especially being set in New York. So thank you for sharing. I will be sure to add it to our strictly fact syllabus for our listeners who haven't checked out um that work for us.

Lessons For Collective Survival Today

Speaker 45:39

I do want us to end on one final question, and that's really um your take or you know, advice for our listeners tuning in. And so, what do you ultimately hope that, you know, those who are listening take away from the significance of these organizations, not just from a historical, you know, understanding and perspective, right? But how we really think about things like community and care and collective survival today, especially in a world where I think conversations about diaspora supporting the the Caribbean is really important and really kind of like a it it keeps becoming a thing, right? But I think oftentimes it lives in an understanding of like remittances and how that is additionally a form of care, but like what can we do beyond that? And so I'd love to hear your take.

Speaker 1 46:30

I think for me, I I look I hope that people look to these organizations, and this is what I tell sometimes my students, especially teaching in the times that we're teaching in right now, where it just feels so bleak, right? Look at the example of these immigrants who had so much less than us in terms of social media being able to connect with each other on and just in terms of resources, right? And we can look to them as the example of um perseverance, right, and of strength, the importance and power of collectively putting together our our resources, right? And taking care of not only ourselves, but our larger community. And so I hope that listeners can look at these organizations, take influence from them, guide us, um copy, borrow some of their collective uh strategies, and then we can put them into use for today because we definitely I think are in a period where we need to rely on each other as community. We're not getting it from the outside, and so we do have to live within ourselves. And I think these organizations are like a shining example of what we can do when we put our hour together, right? And how we can move forward and build things and make the world better for ourselves through these organizations. And again, they didn't have as much as we did, and they're able to make so much with these organizations. And so I think we can look to them as an example and take from that and and borrow and create create our own forms or reignite um and reinvigorate the um organizations that are already in existence. I think that's also an important thing, is that we don't have to keep reinventing this, right? There are examples that are laid out for us. There are organizations that are still in existence that just need new membership, that need fresh leadership, right? And so look for what's already in our communities, join those and and add new ideas to them. And I think that would be like less exhausting than recreating the wheel every single time.

Speaker 48:52

That is a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much, Dr. Maddox, for joining us again for this episode. Um, I want to shout out your book again. So, for our listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode, you want to learn more about um Caribbean Mutual Aid Societies, feel free to check out A Home Away from Home, Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity. Um, it's I will link it, of course, in our show show notes for you to check out easily. Um, but it was a tremendous read for me, I think, and one that I definitely recommend for you all. So again, we hope um you enjoyed this episode. Thank you, Dr. Maddox. And till next time, look a more. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 49:32

I really appreciate it. This was awesome. Thank you.