Interview with Alvin Watson
IntervieweeInterview with
Alvin Watson
Jamaican, 1937 - 2005
Date2001 February 20
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration (side 1): 45 Minutes, 45 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 23 Minutes, 39 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 1 Hour, 9 Minutes, 24 Seconds
Duration (side 2): 23 Minutes, 39 Seconds
Duration (total runtime): 1 Hour, 9 Minutes, 24 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineGift of the CHS Exhibitions Department
DescriptionAudio cassette tape of an interview with Alvin (Al) Watson, who was interviewed by Fiona Vernal on February 20, 2001.
Topics discussed include Watson's childhood in Jamaica; his father traveling to the United States for farm work; going to the United States versus England; his time in the British Air Force; the Hartford West Indian community; West Indians in England; working as an insurance agent with New York Life Insurance Company; real estate and home ownership; differences between the United States and Jamaica; the West Indian Social Club and maintaining Jamaican culture; generational differences; education; individuality among different cultures of the West Indies; Carnival; and West Indian Celebration Week.
2013.26.25a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Topics discussed include Watson's childhood in Jamaica; his father traveling to the United States for farm work; going to the United States versus England; his time in the British Air Force; the Hartford West Indian community; West Indians in England; working as an insurance agent with New York Life Insurance Company; real estate and home ownership; differences between the United States and Jamaica; the West Indian Social Club and maintaining Jamaican culture; generational differences; education; individuality among different cultures of the West Indies; Carnival; and West Indian Celebration Week.
2013.26.25a-d consists of two sides, the tape, and a J-card.
Object number2013.26.25a-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
