Interview with Zelma Cammock Wilson
IntervieweeInterview with
Zelma Cammock Wilson
(Jamaican, born 1911)
Date2000 December 1
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 46 Minutes, 1 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 14 Minutes, 18 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 1 Hour, 20 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
Object number2013.26.15a-d
DescriptionAudio cassette tape of an interview with Zelma Cammock Wilson, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on December 1, 2000.
Topics discussed include Wilson's childhood in St. Ann, Jamaica; how she met her husband and their marriage; how she migrated to the United States; her work as a nurse; working at McCook Hospital in Hartford; difficulties West Indians had after marrying Americans; the West Indian community in Hartford; generational differences; church and religion; tobacco farms and apple picking; what it means to be West Indian; differences between West Indians and African Americans; and visiting Jamaica.
2013.26.15a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Topics discussed include Wilson's childhood in St. Ann, Jamaica; how she met her husband and their marriage; how she migrated to the United States; her work as a nurse; working at McCook Hospital in Hartford; difficulties West Indians had after marrying Americans; the West Indian community in Hartford; generational differences; church and religion; tobacco farms and apple picking; what it means to be West Indian; differences between West Indians and African Americans; and visiting Jamaica.
2013.26.15a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Label TextListen to interview at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:19641557
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
