Interview with Viola Wimbish
IntervieweeInterview with
Viola Wimbish
(Bahamian, born 1931)
Date2001 February 20
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 46 Minutes, 4 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 11 Minutes, 54 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 57 Minutes, 59 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
Object number2013.26.26a-e
Description(a-d) Audio cassette tape of an interview with Viola (Ida) Wimbish, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on February 20, 2001. (e) Black and white portrait photograph of Viola Wimbish.
Topics discussed include Wimbish's family and her childhood in the Bahamas; her mother moving to an urban area; tourists in the Bahamas; race versus class/caste in the Bahamas; her thoughts of America, New York, and race relations; early thoughts of a career and the limited migration and career opportunities; the experience of World War II; the opportunity to come to the United States; Wimbish, unfamiliar with American race relations, thought "Colored Only" coach cars were good special treatments; meeting her husband and marriage; memories of the Bellevue Square Housing Project; getting a job in the pastry shop at G. Fox; her husband working as a billing clerk at Hartford Electric Light Company; living in Bloomfield; working a night job to take all her children to the Bahamas; other Bahamians in the Hartford area in the 1950s; socializing at the West Indian Social Club; the Black presence in Bloomfield; the limits of socializing at the West Indian Social Club; comparisions between the Bahamas and American on education and race; finishing her education at Central Connecticut State University; working as a senior outreach person then with the State Welfare Department; changes in the Bahamas since the 1950s when Wimbish migrated; and West Indian work ethic and education.
2013.26.26a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
2013.26.26e: photograph
Topics discussed include Wimbish's family and her childhood in the Bahamas; her mother moving to an urban area; tourists in the Bahamas; race versus class/caste in the Bahamas; her thoughts of America, New York, and race relations; early thoughts of a career and the limited migration and career opportunities; the experience of World War II; the opportunity to come to the United States; Wimbish, unfamiliar with American race relations, thought "Colored Only" coach cars were good special treatments; meeting her husband and marriage; memories of the Bellevue Square Housing Project; getting a job in the pastry shop at G. Fox; her husband working as a billing clerk at Hartford Electric Light Company; living in Bloomfield; working a night job to take all her children to the Bahamas; other Bahamians in the Hartford area in the 1950s; socializing at the West Indian Social Club; the Black presence in Bloomfield; the limits of socializing at the West Indian Social Club; comparisions between the Bahamas and American on education and race; finishing her education at Central Connecticut State University; working as a senior outreach person then with the State Welfare Department; changes in the Bahamas since the 1950s when Wimbish migrated; and West Indian work ethic and education.
2013.26.26a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
2013.26.26e: photograph
Label TextListen to interview at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:19641567
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
