Interview with David H. Cooke
IntervieweeInterview with
David H. Cooke
(Jamaican, born 1934)
Date2001 February 8
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (tape 1, side 1): 46 Minutes, 12 Seconds
Duration (tape 1, side 2): 46 Minutes, 29 Seconds
Duration (tape 2, side 1): 47 Minutes, 9 Seconds
Duration (tape 2, side 2): 47 Minutes, 9 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 3 Hours, 7 Minutes, 1 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
Object number2013.26.21.1-.2
DescriptionAudio cassette tape of an interview with David H. Cooke, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on February 8, 2001.
Topics discussed include Cooke growing up on Chatham Farm, a 300-acre estate in Jamaica; a 1951 hurricane that destroyed Chatham Farm leaving the Cooke family financially strapped; banana farming; education; sugar boiling at the Hamden Sugar Estate; discovering a talent for chemistry; getting fired from the Hamden Sugar Estate; taking a job with the census; migrating to the United States; cutting sugar cane in Florida; working at the commissary; discrimination, prejudice, and segregation; marriage; his occupational history; moving to Connecticut in 1961; networking with other Jamaicans in Hartford; working at Heublein Research Laboratories as a bench chemist; the West Indian Social Club; becoming president of the West Indian Social Club; the clique of power, known as The Electoral College, at the Social Club in the 1970s; buying and renovating a building on Main Street in Hartford for the Social Club; dealing with the issue of resentment in the Social Club - rivalries amongst Jamaicans, rivalry between Jamaicans and other Islanders, and resentments about playing cricket; women's roles and full membership in the Social Club; diaspora and culture; working at Ensign-Bickford;
going into business for himself; resettling and retiring in Jamaica; and challenges for retirees in Jamaica.
Tape 1: 2013.26.21.1a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Tape 2: 2013.26.21.2a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Topics discussed include Cooke growing up on Chatham Farm, a 300-acre estate in Jamaica; a 1951 hurricane that destroyed Chatham Farm leaving the Cooke family financially strapped; banana farming; education; sugar boiling at the Hamden Sugar Estate; discovering a talent for chemistry; getting fired from the Hamden Sugar Estate; taking a job with the census; migrating to the United States; cutting sugar cane in Florida; working at the commissary; discrimination, prejudice, and segregation; marriage; his occupational history; moving to Connecticut in 1961; networking with other Jamaicans in Hartford; working at Heublein Research Laboratories as a bench chemist; the West Indian Social Club; becoming president of the West Indian Social Club; the clique of power, known as The Electoral College, at the Social Club in the 1970s; buying and renovating a building on Main Street in Hartford for the Social Club; dealing with the issue of resentment in the Social Club - rivalries amongst Jamaicans, rivalry between Jamaicans and other Islanders, and resentments about playing cricket; women's roles and full membership in the Social Club; diaspora and culture; working at Ensign-Bickford;
going into business for himself; resettling and retiring in Jamaica; and challenges for retirees in Jamaica.
Tape 1: 2013.26.21.1a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Tape 2: 2013.26.21.2a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Label TextListen to interview at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:19641562
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
