Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900-1930. - book reviews | Journal of Social History | Find Articles
Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900-1930. - book reviews | Journal of Social History | Find Articles
By Irma Watkins-Owens (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. x plus 238pp. $39.95/cloth $17.50/paperback).
"I know that you are far from home," J. F. Dowridge of St. Michael's Parish, Barbados wrote to his daughter Aletha in 1904. "Trust in God will help you with your hard work." (p. 11) Between 1900 and 1930, forty thousand (40,000) Aletha Dowridges arrived in New York, largely from the English-speaking Caribbean islands. They arrived when Harlem was in the process of becoming, their presence would affect greatly what it would become. Northern blacks migrating from lower Manhattan, their southern kinfolk, and their Caribbean-born cousins all converged on Harlem in the three decades of the twentieth century. "The result," Watkins-Owens argues, was a "unique" "intraracial, ethnic community" which contemporaries described as a "seething melting pot of conflicting nationalities and languages," a "homegrown ethnic amalgam," "a diverse and complex population." (p. 1) Present day scholars have largely ignored the "intraracial ethnic dimensions as an important dynamic in African American community life," the author contends. This study proposes to re-insert this variable into the study of the African-American community.
By Irma Watkins-Owens (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. x plus 238pp. $39.95/cloth $17.50/paperback).
"I know that you are far from home," J. F. Dowridge of St. Michael's Parish, Barbados wrote to his daughter Aletha in 1904. "Trust in God will help you with your hard work." (p. 11) Between 1900 and 1930, forty thousand (40,000) Aletha Dowridges arrived in New York, largely from the English-speaking Caribbean islands. They arrived when Harlem was in the process of becoming, their presence would affect greatly what it would become. Northern blacks migrating from lower Manhattan, their southern kinfolk, and their Caribbean-born cousins all converged on Harlem in the three decades of the twentieth century. "The result," Watkins-Owens argues, was a "unique" "intraracial, ethnic community" which contemporaries described as a "seething melting pot of conflicting nationalities and languages," a "homegrown ethnic amalgam," "a diverse and complex population." (p. 1) Present day scholars have largely ignored the "intraracial ethnic dimensions as an important dynamic in African American community life," the author contends. This study proposes to re-insert this variable into the study of the African-American community.
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