Antonia Ignacio Ramalho Sequeira

Antonia Ignacia Ramalho Sequeira was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1924, the daughter of Ignacia (Soares) and Francisco “Chic Clau” Ramalho, immigrants from the Cape Verdean island of Sao Nicolau. Her parents lived first in Warren, Rhode Island, where they worked in the mills, moving to the heart of Bridgeport’s Cape Verdean community on Lexington Avenue shortly before Antonia was born. Antonia spoke only Krioulu until she went to school, after the family settled in Stratford in 1930. The Ramalhos were the first Cape Verdeans in Stratford’s Dewey Street area but others soon followed. Their neighbors Peter and Isabel Fernandes often hosted Cape Verdean sailors who would play music while Isabel sang and taught Antonia and her sisters “all the old songs.” Special family and community occasions such as christenings, as well as impromptu gatherings of friends, would lead to kitchen dances often lasting two or three days, with local families and traveling musicians joining in. Antonia loved the special community feeling of this music and dance, recalling, “People would come over early in the morning and they’d just play music. In the summer we would sweep the dirt and dance in our bare feet.” Antonia’s sister Rose, a talented singer, learned many Cape Verdean songs from her father who played the violin and toured with several bands. Pioneer music producer and distributor Al Lopes from New Bedford made one of the earliest Cape Verdean-American recordings, of Rose singing the morna “Bissau.”

Inspired by her traditional musical family and vibrant Cape Verdean neighborhood, Antonia developed a deep love and knowledge of her culture. She retained detailed memories of people and events, especially those related to music, and was able to record these memories on tape over the years. Always a collector and deeply involved in many organizations and activities, she kept detailed records of the community and its social events. Antonia’s collections of family and historical photographs comprise a rare documentary record of Cape Verdeans in Connecticut during the first half of the 20th century.

Among her numerous organizational affiliations, Antonia was a founding member of the Cape Verdean Women’s Social Club of Bridgeport (established 1944), and served as its president from 1965 to 1967 and again from 1970 to 2002. She spearheaded many projects designed to bring Cape Verdean heritage to public attention. In 1978, Antonia worked with Theresa Cardozo and others from the Women’s Social Club to sponsor a month-long series of lectures, exhibits, and concerts highlighting Cape Verdean culture at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. She was a member of the Connecticut Friends of the Ernestina/Morrissey, a group responsible for bringing the schooner to Captains Cove in Fairfield in 1983, as a way to educate audiences about Cape Verdean immigration. Antonia, or “Tiny” as she was often called, held memberships and active roles in the Cape Verdean Women’s Scholarship Committee, the Cape Verdean United/Unidade Caboverdeana, the Cesar Pina Scholarship Committee, the St. James Choir, the Cape Verdean Cultural Foundation of Connecticut, and the Red Hat Society. Antonia coordinated regular cultural displays at the Bridgeport Public Library and the annual Thanksgiving Day Mass celebrated by Pio Groton of Boston at St. Augustine’s Church in Bridgeport. She was involved in providing donations to the Thomas Merton Soup Kitchen in Bridgeport and the celebration honoring Francisco Borges, the first Cape Verdean Treasurer for the State of Connecticut.

Alongside her love of Cape Verdeans and their culture, Antonia nurtured her family. She was married to Russell Sequeira and they lived in the same house where she grew up, raising their family of two sons and one daughter. Antonia also worked for many years at Burndy Corporation in Milford.

Antonia’s community showed its appreciation for her unwavering commitment by honoring her in several ways: she was selected as Woman of the Year in 1984 and had her name etched in the State Capitol Building in Hartford. The Cape Verdean Women’s Club held a special dinner dance in her honor in 2003 to mark her years of service to that group, and dedicated the Antonia Sequeira Library, an archive of her collected materials.

Antonia reached out to a wider public in the 1990s with her message of Cape Verdean pride. Representing the Cape Verdean Women’s Social Club, she participated in a new program for urban artists organized by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Institute for Community Research. Her friend and colleague in that program, Joan Neves, was able to travel to Washington, DC in 1995 for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival which that year featured Cape Verdean culture. Inspired by that experience, Joan and Antonia began to plan for a long-term project to document their local community and its history. They found a partner in Lynne Williamson, Director of the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program, the statewide folk and traditional arts program at the Institute for Community Research. Together the team obtained grants from the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund Community Folklife Program. For three years Antonia, Joan, and Lynne conducted taped interviews with Cape Verdean musicians and tradition bearers across the state, also documenting Cape Verdean neighborhoods, festivals, and activities. Their work resulted in a publication called "Connecticut Cape Verdeans: A Community History" that was distributed to every public library in the state and given to as many Cape Verdeans as possible in the region. The Waterbury Cape Verdean Social Club hosted a concert featuring musicians interviewed during the project, and a panel discussion was held at the Bridgeport Public Library. The materials collected by Antonia and the project team became a valuable archive of Cape Verdean life in Connecticut - information that had never been collected and made available to the public before. Copies are now housed at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, and the Cape Verdean Women’s Club in Bridgeport.

Antonia’s work on the community history project continues to bear fruit. The book has been used by Cape Verdean organizations in Norwich and other Connecticut cities to educate people about the culture and especially the community’s gift of music. Younger Cape Verdeans in Waterbury, Norwich, and New Haven are coming forward to carry on the oral history work that Antonia believed in so fervently. Antonia passed away on February 28, 2005. She will be remembered as a tireless ambassadress for Cape Verdean culture; as a tradition bearer herself - someone who lived a life of deep Cape Verdean-American identity; and as a woman of grace and love. Her contributions will live on and nourish her people and our world forever. Antonia was posthumously inducted into the Cape Verdean Hall of Fame, in Swansea, Massachusetts.