Interview with Cecile Foster
IntervieweeInterview with
Cecile Foster
(Jamaican)
IntervieweeInterview with
Lydia Haughton
(Jamaican, 1925 - 2018)
Date2001 August 3
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 47 Minutes, 28 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 45 Minutes, 41 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 1 Hour, 33 Minutes, 9 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
Object number2013.26.36a-d
DescriptionAudio cassette tape of an interview with Cecile Foster, who were interviewed by Fiona Vernal on August 3, 2001. Ms. Foster’s mother-in-law, Lydia Haughton was present at the interview and makes a few comments at the beginning.
Topics discussed include Foster's childhood in Jamaica; education; Lydia filing for her son and daughter-in-law (Cecile) to come to America; Foster's impressions of the cold climate; setting goals for her life in America; her first job at a grocery store in Hartford; her job history; managing five children, a job, and a husband; dealing with co-workers and Black customers; returning to Jamaica; how she dealt with leaving her children for two years to migrate; her kids being teased for their accents; retirement in Jamaica; life as a young returnee in Jamaica; and the pace of life in Jamaica.
2013.26.36a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Topics discussed include Foster's childhood in Jamaica; education; Lydia filing for her son and daughter-in-law (Cecile) to come to America; Foster's impressions of the cold climate; setting goals for her life in America; her first job at a grocery store in Hartford; her job history; managing five children, a job, and a husband; dealing with co-workers and Black customers; returning to Jamaica; how she dealt with leaving her children for two years to migrate; her kids being teased for their accents; retirement in Jamaica; life as a young returnee in Jamaica; and the pace of life in Jamaica.
2013.26.36a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Label TextListen to interview at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:19641577
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
