Interview with Desmond Collins
IntervieweeInterview with
Desmond Collins
Jamaican, born 1955
Date2000 November 28
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 47 Minutes
Duration (side 2): 45 Minutes, 29 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 1 Hour, 32 Minutes, 30 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 45 Minutes, 29 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 1 Hour, 32 Minutes, 30 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
DescriptionAudio cassette tape of an interview with Desmond Collins, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on November 28, 2000.
Topics discussed include Collins' childhood in Linstead, St. Catherine, Jamaica; differences between his childhood and his son's; coming to Hartford in 1979; Jamaican farm workers who came to the United States; attending Central Connecticut State University; stereotypes about West Indians and African Americans; living in Bloomfield; the West Indian Social Club; meeting his wife and marriage; Jamaican and West Indian culture; the West Indian Foundation; generational differences; other West Indian clubs and organizations; and his experience running a non-profit.
2013.26.12a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Topics discussed include Collins' childhood in Linstead, St. Catherine, Jamaica; differences between his childhood and his son's; coming to Hartford in 1979; Jamaican farm workers who came to the United States; attending Central Connecticut State University; stereotypes about West Indians and African Americans; living in Bloomfield; the West Indian Social Club; meeting his wife and marriage; Jamaican and West Indian culture; the West Indian Foundation; generational differences; other West Indian clubs and organizations; and his experience running a non-profit.
2013.26.12a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Object number2013.26.12a-d
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.
Subject Terms
On View
Not on view
