At the turn of the last century, New York City was bursting with mutual aid societies and benevolent associations serving many of the 40 million immigrants who came to the United States, mainly from southern and Eastern Europe. In A Home Away from Home, Tyesha Maddox examine the groups established by and for Caribbeans, some of the most neglected groups in historical research. These years marked the first large-scale wave of Caribbean emigration to America. Between the 1880s and 1920s, tens of thousands of migrants came from the islands. Eager to find or make a place in this new world, they created organizations like the West Indian Benevolent Association, which provided job and housing assistance, rotating lines of credit, help with naturalization, and its most popular function — help with sickness and burial. More expansively, these institutions also became natural spaces for discussions on Caribbean American life, fostering a new collective identity among groups from specific islands. And they strengthened the belief that their fate was closely intertwined with that of Blacks abroad, becoming in many ways early Pan-Africanist organizations. Especially important were the female leaders among them, such as Elizabeth Hendrickson, co-founder of the American West Indian Ladies’ Aid Society and the Harlem Tenants’ League.

Kaysha Corinealdi, author of Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century, joins in conversation.