"A Home Away from Home: Early 20th Century Caribbean Immigration to the United States"
Thursday, February 6, 2025 4:30pm to 6pm
About this Event
Devlin Hall, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/morrissey/sites/aadsAFRICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES PROGRAM
2024-2025 NEW DIRECTIONS LECTURE SERIES:
"A Home Away from Home: Early 20th Century Caribbean Immigration to the United States"
TYESHA MADDX
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY
When immigrants arrived in New York in the early 1900s, mutual aid societies provided basic services that the government did not and they were key to survival. People who arrived from the Caribbean at that time were no different and they eagerly formed these associations to build community. In her new book, A Home Away from Home, Tyesha Maddox reveals the role that mutual aid societies played in the development of a Pan-Caribbean American identity and a wider Black identity. The organizations and the networks they created also made people look toward the Caribbean and strengthen ties back home. With a complex sense of home that already spanned the ocean, Caribbean immigrants recognized their connections to an even broader Black international community. In the end, these very local associations had global ramifications.
How does community-building in the past shed light on how we create networks in the present?
Tyesha Maddox is an Associate Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies at Fordham University. Her research and teaching interests encompass the African Diaspora, Caribbean studies, the Black Atlantic, women and gender issues, African American history, race, transnational communities, migrational movements, immigration, Black identity formation, and social and cultural history.