Every person who moves to a new area has to find a place both literally (a job and a place to live) and figuratively (friends and a community). As part of the West Indian Community History Documentation Project, CHS conducted 37 oral histories with founders of the West Indian community. Below you will meet four of the individuals who generously shared their stories with CHS.

All of the quotes are taken directly from the oral histories. Some sentences have been re-ordered, but every effort was made to retain the speech patterns of each individual.

You can meet more of the interviewees in the exhibition. Full transcripts of the oral histories are available for viewing in CHS library, open Tuesday through Saturday, Noon to 5 PM.

When I came, the first place I was brought to was the West Indian Social Club. And everyone there opened their arms to me because they realized I was new to town. That’s why I always tell myself that, as long as I can do it, I would help provide a place that when newcomers come from the island, they have a place that they can really call home because I know it helped me keep my head straight on. This place is big with a lot of people, but you can be very lonely in it.

Noel Elliott, Jamaica, Arrived 1944
We come here as a hungry bunch. There is opportunity here to make money. In Jamaica what you do, you do a little farming. Some lucky; they get good education, go to college. Myself, I came here 19 years old. What’d I have? I have nothing. So I was hungry.

I came here on the contract. I was told that I was going tobacco. We was into soldier barracks. You’ve got a stove in the middle and beds was lined up. They were a bunch of men, no privacy. So you need to get used to it, enjoy it. We played domino; we played ping-pong; we wrestled. I go run. I do boxing. Then we started to play cricket. I make the bats out of woods because we couldn’t get no cricket bats then. And we found out that other farm workers was playing cricket at different camps. So after awhile we started to get together and I formed a team because I was a good cricketer.

I got 75 cents an hour. Sometime I get my check envelope—50 cents in it because compulsory saving always go to Jamaica -- mine go to my parents -- and they take out your food, lodging, and what’s left they give it to you.

West Indian always stick with West Indians, especially when you was in camp. You get to know a lot of guys you never knew before, so you become friends. We have that togetherness in Hartford.

Trevel Ritchens, Nevis, Arrived 1977
I came when I was fifteen. I had no inkling of anything because I hadn’t traveled before. My sister came here back in 1960. She was the first to arrive. She decided to bring all of us over, my mother, all my sisters and brothers. And my family was a family of ten. And then my mother adopted another one so there was eleven of us in our family.

Our parents and people in the community, they didn’t want us to do the same thing they had to do. They wanted us to make a better life for ourselves. We see our parents and the things that they had to go through. I see the work that my dad had to endure in order to get what you want out of the land. And I didn’t want to do that.

When we came to America I thought that was a better change for me. Then I wouldn’t have to do the same thing that my dad or my parents had to do. We wanted to get a better education and to have things that seem hard to get for people back in our islands. And we wanted to see how things were the same or different.

It seemed like a trend that once somebody from Nevis leaves they try to help another person to come up. To further their education or try to better themselves.

Carmen Boudier, Jamaica, Arrived 1968
A lot of us women came on a domestic program. That was the great opportunity. That’s how I came and I’m very proud of it. Then I got a job as a nurse’s aide. I was working for about $1.30 an hour, and no benefits, no health insurance, no holiday, no sick time, no nothing. In the fall of 1969, a union came around. I got involved with the union, and we negotiated our first contract.

I decide I need to go back to school and became an ER technician and I work in emergency room at Mount Sinai Hospital. I left there and came to the union as staff. I was working to make a difference in my own countrywomen’s life. Now I want to stay with this and make a difference and continue to do this ‘til I can do it no more.

I say there’s a lot of opportunity here. This country will either make you or break you. If you want it to make you, then you’ve got to go work hard for it. The fact is that I am a woman and I carry an accent. I guess my color says something else, but I made a decision, “Here I am. You’re going to have to deal with me,” and I just wouldn’t let up on that. I just had to find my place.