Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900-1930 / Edition 1

by Irma Watkins-Owens

Overview

In Blood Relations, Irma Watkins-Owens focuses on the complex interaction of African Americans and African Caribbeans in Harlem during the first decades of the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1930, 40,000 Caribbean immigrants settled in New York City and joined with African Americans to create the unique ethnic community of Harlem. Watkins-Owens confronts issues of Caribbean immigrant and black American relations, placing their interaction in the context of community formation. She draws the reader into a cultural milieu that included the radical tradition of stepladder speaking; Marcus Garvey's contentious leadership; the underground numbers operations of Caribbean immigrant entrepreneurs; and the literary renaissance and emergence of black journalists.

Through interviews, census data, and biography, Watkins-Owens shows how immigrants and southern African American migrants settled together in railroad flats and brownstones, worked primarily at service occupations, often lodged with relatives or home people, and strove to "make it" in New York.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253210487
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	03/22/1996
Series:	Blacks in the Diaspora
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

IRMA WATKINS-OWENS is Assistant Professor and Director of the African American and African Studies Institute at Fordham University-Lincoln Center Campus.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction: Intraracial Ethnicity in Harlem, 1900-1930
2 Panama Silver Meets Jim Crow
3 "On to Harlem"
4 Churches, Benevolent Associations, and Ethnicity
5 Politics and the Struggle for Autonomy
6 Stepladder to Community
7 Marcus Garvey: "Negro Subject of Great Britain"
8 Ethnic and Race Enterprise
9 The Underground Entrepreneur
10 Harlem Writers and Intraracial Ethnicity
11 Conclusion: Blood Relations in the Black Metropolis

Appendix
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index