Interview with Fitz Jeremiah
IntervieweeInterview with
Fitz Jeremiah
(Trinidadian, 1926 - 2001)
Date2000 November 17
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 44 Minutes, 44 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 5 Minutes, 53 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 50 Minutes, 37 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
Object number2013.26.7a-d
DescriptionAudio cassette tape of an interview with Fitz Jeremiah, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on November 17, 2000.
Topics discussed include Jeremiah's childhood in Trinidad and Tobago; coming to the United States for farm labor; impressions of America and racial discrimination; work in Ohio, New Jersey, and Connecticut; getting married; personalities at the West Indian Social Club in the 1950s; working as the Chair of Health and Welfare at the Social Club;
working at Gold Bond Mattresses in Hartford; his children; and accepting Jamaican dominance in the Social Club and supporting both the West Indian Social Club and the Trinidad Club he formed.
2013.26.7a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Topics discussed include Jeremiah's childhood in Trinidad and Tobago; coming to the United States for farm labor; impressions of America and racial discrimination; work in Ohio, New Jersey, and Connecticut; getting married; personalities at the West Indian Social Club in the 1950s; working as the Chair of Health and Welfare at the Social Club;
working at Gold Bond Mattresses in Hartford; his children; and accepting Jamaican dominance in the Social Club and supporting both the West Indian Social Club and the Trinidad Club he formed.
2013.26.7a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Label TextListen to interview at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:19641549
NotesSubject Note: In 1999, the West Indian Social Club of Hartford and the West Indian Foundation asked the Connecticut Historical Society to join them in documenting the lives of the West Indian immigrants who first came to the Hartford area in the 1940s to work on local tobacco farms.What began as a project designed to record the experiences of these early pioneers - mostly men from Jamaica - subsequently grew to include audio and videotaped interviews of men and women, elders and young people, longtime residents and more recent arrivals to the Greater Hartford area, both from Jamaica and the other English-speaking, independent countries in the Caribbean.
The exhibition explored a common thread that seems to link people’s individual stories: the challenge of putting down roots in a new place while maintaining ties with the people, history, and cultural heritage of their homelands in the West Indies.
The exhibition, "Finding a Place, Maintaining Ties: Greater Hartford’s West Indians," was on view at the Connecticut Historical Society from July 2, 2002 – August 31, 2003.
Status
Not on view
