Interview with Martin Roach
IntervieweeInterview with
Martin Roach
(Barbadian, 1922 - 2008)
Date2001 May 23
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 46 Minutes, 31 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 45 Minutes, 35 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 1 Hour, 32 Minutes, 7 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
Object number2013.26.35a-e
Description(a-d) Audio cassette tape of an interview with Martin Roach, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on May 23, 2001. He was interviewed at The Barbadian Club. (e) Black and white portrait photograph of Martin Roach.
Topics discussed include Roach's family and childhood in Barbados; his parent's and brother's occupations; his impression that money is easy to come by in America; his aunt's migration story; memories of Barbadian migration to Panama; coming to the United States in 1946 on contact labor; coming on a boat to Florida to cut sugar cane; his job at a hotel in Barbados before going to Florida; staying in Florida for 18 months for wages of $4.00 per day; racial discrimination at work; motivation for extending his contract to 18 months; Roach goes to New York in 1947 and is an illegal alien for a while; employment in New York as a janitor and tailor; marriage; life in New York; leaving New York for Connecticut; his uncle's advice for saving money; getting a job at Hartford Rayon Company in Rocky Hill in 1957; finding a place to live and the logistics of buying a home; West Indians at the Hartford Rayon Company; training as a machinist at Prince Tech and working at for Chandler-Evans; working for Chandler-Evans and retiring in 1979; adopting two children; some West Indian sayings; meeting his wife and marriage; the beginnings of the Barbadian Club; and changes at the Barbadian Club.
2013.26.35a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
2013.26.35e: photograph
Topics discussed include Roach's family and childhood in Barbados; his parent's and brother's occupations; his impression that money is easy to come by in America; his aunt's migration story; memories of Barbadian migration to Panama; coming to the United States in 1946 on contact labor; coming on a boat to Florida to cut sugar cane; his job at a hotel in Barbados before going to Florida; staying in Florida for 18 months for wages of $4.00 per day; racial discrimination at work; motivation for extending his contract to 18 months; Roach goes to New York in 1947 and is an illegal alien for a while; employment in New York as a janitor and tailor; marriage; life in New York; leaving New York for Connecticut; his uncle's advice for saving money; getting a job at Hartford Rayon Company in Rocky Hill in 1957; finding a place to live and the logistics of buying a home; West Indians at the Hartford Rayon Company; training as a machinist at Prince Tech and working at for Chandler-Evans; working for Chandler-Evans and retiring in 1979; adopting two children; some West Indian sayings; meeting his wife and marriage; the beginnings of the Barbadian Club; and changes at the Barbadian Club.
2013.26.35a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
2013.26.35e: photograph
Label TextListen to interview at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:19641576
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
