In June 2005, the House of Representatives unanimously adopted H. Con. Res. 71, sponsored by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, which initiated the foundation of Caribbean American Heritage Month. Continuing what was established 2006, on May 31, 2024, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation celebrating the newly established holiday month.
While we often think of Caribbean Americans as modern-day immigrants or descendants of fairly recent immigrants, that overlooks earlier waves dating as far back as the time of enslavement. The Caribbean was used as a place for “seasoning” enslaved people before being sold to slaveholders in the United States. A look at Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s enslavement database will illustrate the Caribbean point of origin of many enslaved people who arrived via southern ports.
Later waves would come in via multiple ports of entry—for example, when we hear “Ellis Island” we tend to think of European migration, however a look at their records shows that tens of thousands of Caribbean people came through their portal.
Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.
In 2023, CBS News featured one Caribbean family’s migration story through Ellis Island “where millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia arrived in the United States, but less known is that it's also where hundreds of thousands of Black people entered from the Caribbean.”
To explore the contributions of Caribbean Americans to the U.S., of which there are over four million, I encourage you to visit Google Arts and Culture’s webpages Caribbean Spirit.
Probably one of the most well-known Caribbean American figures who wasn’t from the world of the arts, sports, or entertainment was Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm—who though born here in Brooklyn, New York, in 1924 (which allowed her to run for president in 1972), was partially raised in Barbados by her grandmother before returning to Brooklyn.
RELATED STORY: Before Barack, Hillary, and Bernie, there was Shirley Chisholm
I think sometimes we take seeing Black women in Congress for granted—from Auntie Maxine Waters to Barbara Lee to Stacey Plaskett, and dynamic newcomer Jasmine Crockett of Texas. It has only been 55 years since 1969—a very short time ago when Chisholm became the first Black woman to serve in Congress. The first modern-era Black man, Oscar De Priest was elected to Congress in 1928. The first white woman, Jeannette Rankin, was elected to one term in 1916.
This mini-documentary on Chisholm serves as a good introduction:
Her biography from the congressional website:
Shirley Chisholm was born Shirley Anita St. Hill on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the oldest of four daughters of Charles St. Hill, a factory worker from Guyana, and Ruby Seale St. Hill, a seamstress from Barbados. For part of her childhood, Chisholm lived in Barbados on her maternal grandparents’ farm and received a British education while her parents worked during the Great Depression to settle the family in Bedford-Stuyvesant. … The most apparent manifestation of her West Indies roots was the slight, clipped British accent she retained throughout her life. She attended public schools in Brooklyn and graduated with high marks. Chisholm attended Brooklyn College on scholarship and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1946. … Three years later, she earned a master’s degree in early childhood education from Columbia University. She served as an educational consultant for New York City’s division of daycare from 1959 to 1964. … In 1964, Chisholm was elected to the New York state legislature; she was the second African-American woman to serve in Albany. In 1977, she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a New York state legislator.
A court-ordered redistricting—that carved a new Brooklyn congressional district with a slight Black majority and a large Puerto Rican population out of Chisholm’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood—convinced her to run for Congress. The influential Democratic political machine, headed by Stanley Steingut, declared its intention to send an African-American candidate from the new district to the House. … Chisholm, however, received the support of community organizers with whom she had worked for more than a decade. Chisholm roamed the new district in a sound truck that pulled up outside housing projects while she announced: “Ladies and Gentlemen . . . this is fighting Shirley Chisholm coming through.” Chisholm capitalized on her personal campaign style. “I have a way of talking that does something to people,” she noted. “I have a theory about campaigning. You have to let them feel you.”[...]
In the general election, Chisholm faced James Farmer, who ran as the candidate of both the Republican Party and the Liberal Party. Farmer was one of the principal figures of the civil rights movement, a cofounder of the Congress of Racial Equality, and an organizer of the Freedom Riders in the early 1960s. The two candidates held similar positions on housing, employment, and education issues, and both opposed the Vietnam War. Farmer charged that the Democratic Party “took [Black voters] for granted and thought they had us in their pockets. . . . We must be in a position to use our power as a swing vote.” Farmer focused on Chisholm’s gender, arguing that “women have been in the driver’s seat” in Black communities for too long and that the district needed “a man’s voice in Washington,” not that of a “little schoolteacher.” Chisholm, whose campaign motto was “unbought and unbossed,” met that charge head-on, using Farmer’s rhetoric to highlight discrimination against women and to explain her unique qualifications. … The deciding factor, however, was that more than 80 percent of the district’s registered voters were Democrats. Chisholm won the general election by a resounding 67 percent of the vote.
I’ve listened to many interviews with Chisholm, however I don’t remember hearing about the hostility she faced once elected. This interview was conducted by Dr. Camille O. Cosby for the National Visionary Leadership Project on May 7, 2002. You get a real sense of her humor and outlook on facing barriers.
Here is the full transcript, and a notable moment:
Chisholm: For the first two to three months, I was miserable. The gentleman did not pay me any mind at all. When I'd go to lunch room to eat, they would not sit at the same table as I did because I'm a Black woman. It was horrible. And I'll give you two little incidents that perhaps show...to show you that I have a sense of humor about a lot of things.
There was a little dining room beneath the House—the floor of the House— and that was the place where we could go to get a bite if you were going to have a long day. And I did not know that in that dining room, the tables were designated to the different delegations. There was a table for New York, a table for Alabama, a table for.... And I went one day to go down to sit at a table, and I sat at a table because no-one was sitting there, ten chairs to the table, and I ordered my lunch—I was very hungry that day—and I got dessert and salad and a little bit of everything put on the table. And I always took the New York Times and read it while I was eating because nobody would sit by me. So this day, I felt something hovering around me. I looked up, and if looks could kill, I would have been dead, because I was seated at the Georgian delegation table and didn't know it.
Cosby: [laughing] Oh my goodness. Of all tables!
Chisholm: I was at the Georgian delegation table and didn't know it. And this man stood up and looked and me and said, "You sit at the wrong table." I said, "What did you say?" He said, "I says, you sit at the wrong table." I said, "What table is this?" He went, "Georgia delegation." "Oh," I said, "But you see, the tables do not have any labels. I didn't know. But tomorrow I will find out where New York sits here, and then I will go to New York." So I continued to eat. And he continued, "I says, you're seated at the Georgia delegation table." And I said, "I says..." [laughing] "...if you don't move from here, I will so and so and so." [seriously] But then I began to feel sorry for him, because he was hungry, and I decided to use a different psychological approach. And I said, "You're hungry, aren't you?" And it's the first time he gave me smile, because I was nice to him, I said you're hungry. He said, "Sure I'm hungry." I said, "I know what your problem is. Your problem is you cannot sit at this table because a Black person is seated at the table. Isn't that right?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "I am going to help you. You see that table over there?"—there's a table diagonally across from the table where I was sitting, and there's nobody at it. I said, "Look. You go over and you sit at that table. You order your lunch, and if ANYBODY bothers you, you tell them to see Shirley Chisholm." I thought this would embarrass him, but it did not. [Unintelligible] funniest thing to me. It did not embarrass him. He went right over to the table [laughing] and he sat...and he sat...and he sat down.
Cosby: [laughing] It just proves how ludicrous all this is.
Chisholm: Oh, it is ridiculous.
This NBC news program, which aired on September 20, 1969, offers a unique and intimate perspective into her campaigns and impact.
One in this public affairs series devoted to issues that concern the greater New York area. This program, narrated by Bill Ryan, profiles Shirley Chisholm, freshman member of the House of Representatives and the first black woman elected to Congress. Chisholm, who represents the 12th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York, is shown conferring with Rep. Allard K. Lowenstein of New York; campaigning against James Farmer, former national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); speaking to Bedford-Stuyvesant's Unwed Mother Association; and broadcasting her weekly New York radio show from the House recording studio in Washington, D.C. Chisholm discusses the importance of elementary education; her reaction to the media's portrayal of her; and her opinion about the current state of Congress.
Chisholm joined the ancestors, on January 1, 2005, at the age of 80.
Who are some other Caribbean Americans you’d like me to cover here? Let me know in the comments section below, and check out the weekly Caribbean news roundup.
Denise Oliver Velez June 14, 2024 at 12:30AM From Daily Kos
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