July 26, 2023 • 47 mins
Both Daddy Grace’s family and Marcy’s family came to America from the same Cape Verdean island. And they landed in a place where many Cape Verdeans did – New Bedford, Massachusetts. But why did they immigrate? What pushed them toward America? And once then arrived, did they find the American Dream that they were looking for? And does that have anything to do with why Daddy Grace, as a Black man, called himself “colorless”?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
So daddie is one of those words in cape Verdian
creole that doesn't have a direct English translation. Roughly, it
means missing someone or something, but it's deeper than that.
It's a longing that feels more like a whole, like
a part of your soul is gone. There are many
songs written about this, the most famous, of course, being
(00:27):
by Sesadia Avora, the queen of cape Verdian music. Anyone
can have this feeling of sodad, but for those of
us in the cape Verdian diaspora, it takes on a
very specific meaning because no matter where you live now
or where you were born, all cape Verdians have this
nostalgic feeling. It's a yearning to be in capleverd or
(00:50):
to be with the people who have left, or with
who you've left behind. I'm cape Verdian and on my
dad's side, he has a huge family, but for simplicity's sake,
they're two branches, the Graces and the Dapinas. My great grandfather,
Manuel Grace immigrated to America around the same time as
(01:11):
Daddy Grace, which was the beginning of the twentieth century.
I never met him. He died long before I was born,
but I did know my dad's mother, Lydia Grace Depina,
and his father, Jonathan Depina Senior, who I called Papa.
I adored him. He and my Nana often took care
of me when my parents were working, and I spent
(01:34):
hours with them, happily tagging along behind Papa when he
bent his chickens or helping Nana plant perfect rows of beans,
cal and carrots. I still remember Papa saying to Kenya,
the most important thing in this country is to have
your own land and to pass it on to your children.
(01:55):
I was a curious child, and one of my favorite
things to do with him was to take long walks
and ask him questions about his life back in Cablevere.
He came to the US when he was six on
a schooner named the Volante. I loved hearing about his
childhood back in Cablevert the way the mountains of Fontana's
always sat shrouded in clouds, or the beauty of the
(02:18):
flowers and the people. Listening to these stories made me
feel transported, my own imagination filling in the gaps of
what his life had been like. To me, Cableverd was
a place of wonder, a place I felt so connected to,
a place I could not wait to experience myself. But
(02:38):
within all of that, what I most remember was a
feeling of my papa's mixed emotions, because within his stories
about life on Bravo, I heard a tinge of sadness
in his voice. And when I'd asked my Papa if
he missed Cablvert and if he wanted to go back,
he'd look at me and say, for what, I'm mercy
(03:00):
to Pena and from iHeart podcasts enforce the media group,
this is sweet, Daddy, Grace.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
You're glad, you're being happy.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Bow, thank, You're glad.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Ahead and they laugh against happy brown and crying, we're.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
O b ing.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Daddy immigrated to the United States from Kabovid, just like
my grandfather. It was a country that both then and now,
not many Americans outside the diaspora know much about. But
to get to know Bishop Grace, you have to know
where he came from. The Kapoveti Islands are located about
(04:19):
three hundred and fifty miles off the coast of Senegal
in the Atlantic Ocean. In Portuguese, Kabovid means green cape,
which is quite a bit of a misnomer, as the
country is not particularly green. The islands are situated in
the crossroads of two of the driest trade winds in
the world, so there is very little rain, and several
(04:42):
of the islands are basically deserts. Capplevedy is made up
of ten islands, nine of which are inhabited, and while
they are proudly connected as one country, each is a
little different. Each speaks its own dialect of Creole, for example,
and the cultures are a little different too. The people
of Santiago, the largest island, are known for the music
(05:04):
of batucu, a form of drumming and dancing that is
primarily done by women. Sanvicentz is known for its carnival,
but it is also deeply influenced by the British, who
used the island as a coal refueling station in the
early eighteen hundreds. Embravo, where my family is from, is
(05:28):
the smallest island, known for its hospitality nationally revered poet
Eugenio Tavars, as well as its waterfalls and flowers. We
are most united, perhaps by the fact that at its
very essence, to be Cape Verdean means to have roots
from around the globe, because before Portuguese explorers landed there
(05:51):
in the mid fifteenth century, the Caboverti Islands were actually uninhabited,
and as was the case during this time period, the
Portuguese government was interested in two things, producing sugar and
enslaving Africans to do it. But the land was so
dry the sugar crops failed, and the Portuguese realized that
(06:16):
their new colony was actually much more useful as a
port in their slave trade, which was quickly expanding. Many
Africans brought to Kabulvid were sent on slave ships to
the Americas, but many also stayed. Some were enslaved to
work for Portuguese landholders, and others escaped into the mountains
(06:38):
where they formed their own communities, which still exists today.
So Cape Verdean Creole culture developed. As these populations African
European Middle Eastern intermingled to become something very much its own. Economically, however,
Kablevid was turning into a tough acquisition for the Portuguese.
(07:02):
After around a century of colonization, the land could no
longer grow much like the indigo they had used to
trade for enslaved Africans, and by the late eighteen hundreds,
the slave trade itself had ended, so the colonizers abandoned
the islands and left the people of Kabove to fend
(07:23):
for themselves. Many people suffered horribly. They were literally dying
of starvation and dehydration. The islands experienced chronic droughts, where
sometimes fifty percent of the population would die. Many Cape
Verdians were forced to leave, trying to make whatever money
(07:44):
they could to send back home to feed their families.
Many never returned. The main way out was on railing ships.
The eighteen hundreds were at height of the whaling industry,
and Cape Verdians played a big part as crews on
(08:05):
the American owned boats. They were known for their courage, work, ethic,
and maritime skills. Remember Moby Dick. It was published in
eighteen fifty one and one of the harpooners on board
Dago is thought to be Cape Verdian. But eventually the
work dried up.
Speaker 5 (08:25):
When whaling went into decline in the United States, was
harder to get young Yankees to serve as crew on
whaling vessels.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
That's my stepmom. Marilyn Halter again, scholar of Cape Verdian
American history and professor emerita at Boston University.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
So when they would stop in the Cape Verde Islands.
By the late nineteenth century, they were eager to find
people to man these ships.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Cape Verdian men bought old whaling boats, prepared and started
what was called the packet trade. Now Cape Verdian owned
and operated ships would crisscross the Atlantic, bringing supplies from
the United States back to Cobblevid and bringing immigrants to
New Bedford, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. Because of this,
(09:19):
the first voluntary African immigrants to America were Cape Verdeans.
This ended up giving them an advantage when they arrived,
they still had community.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Really, unlike any immigrant group, white or black, they were
the only population to actually have control over their means
of passage to this country. And when you contrast that
with the other African immigrants who came here involuntarily, the
(09:52):
slave population, who had absolutely no control over anything in
their lives. There was a lot of cultural and community support.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Part of that support meant access to work, though often
the kind of jobs available were the ones no one
else wanted.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
There was such a racial and ethnic hierarchy that the
only jobs for them was at the lowest rung of
the ladder, so the Irish got the best jobs, and
then the Portuguese and the French Canadians, and then you know,
Cape Verdians were at the bottom of the ladder. There
(10:32):
was work at the stack textile mills, on the Cranberry brogs,
and in maritime related occupations such as longshoremen and cooks
and other kinds of dock workers.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Details are scarce about Daddy Grace's immigration story to the US.
We know he had come over from the island of
Brava and landed in New Bedford in nineteen oh four
on a ship called the Louisa. His parents and at
least seven siblings were already there waiting for him. The
New Bedford Evening Standard wrote about the Louisa's arrival. It
(11:13):
mentioned one passenger who looked quote every inch a dude
with his trousers carefully pressed in an immaculate shirt front.
I'd like to hope that was our Marcellino. I get
the feeling he always stood out. He first made his
living in America, like basically all Cape Verdian immigrants did,
(11:36):
working various jobs. He picked Cranberry's in the bogs, a
job he apparently hated so much he threw down his
wheelbarrow and quit. He also sold patent medicines, ran a
grocery store, and worked as a cook in a local
restaurant and later on on the railways. My own great grandfather,
(11:58):
Manuel Grace, the one and I never met, arrived in
the United States around the same time as Daddy Grace,
and in some ways their stories were similar, including the
fact that they were both from Brava and both named Grace.
Speaker 6 (12:13):
The way it was explained to me by Uncle Abel
was that he found out that his father was being promiscuous.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
That's my cousin Jonathan. Again from what Jonathan has been told.
Our great grandfather, who everyone called Nola Locke, left Kabovid
when he was just seventeen years old.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
He had told his mother before he had left and
gone to school, and I guess during the day she
confronted him when he was coming home that his father
was pitching rocks at him, telling him, don't come back
here no more. One of the times that he was hit,
he was hitting the head and then he went down
where there was a whaler stocking up, and that was
(12:52):
his first time that he had left home.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
My aunt Judy Jonathan's mother picks up the story from there.
He had no money.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
He came on a whaling ship working and his destination
was the United States. However, he jumped ship in Bermuda
and worked on a sugar plantation there to earn money
to continue to travel. Sailed around South America and went
to Hawaii, and then he went to San Francisco. He
(13:24):
was there during the nineteen oh six Great Earthquake.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
After the earthquake, my great grandfather got a job on
the railroads and made his way east across the country.
His final destination a small seaside town outside New Bedford
called Mattapoisa, where he had family nearby. Life there suited him.
He got a job doing manual labor and soon saved
(13:49):
enough money to buy a small pig farm and a house.
He was around forty old for a bachelor those days,
and was ready to settle down.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Then.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
He was not a young man, and I believed that
he had an arranged marriage with a Cape Fridian woman
from Brava.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
With just a horse and buggy, he started a small
business collecting trash in the neighborhood, and he eventually won
a contract with the town But when I asked my
aunt to describe Nola Lock for me, she mostly talked
about his spirituality, and he was very, very.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
Much into his religion. In our dining room, we had
a large farmhouse kitchen and we always ate there. I
don't ever recall eating in the dining room, but what
I do remember is that was where my grandfather had
his Bible, and that he sat there and read the Bible.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
So food wasn't.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Served there, but the Word of God was served there.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
My aunt Judy stories got me thinking about how similar
Nola Lock and Daddy Grace's lives must have been in America,
At least at first. They worked the same blue collar
jobs that all Cape Verdians did. They went to the
same shops. They both married Cape Verdian women and started families.
But where we related. I started asking other family members
(15:15):
what they knew or who I should talk to. One
person told me that years before Daddy Grace founded the
United House of Prayer, he would sometimes preach at the
church that Nola Loc attended, the Portuguese Pentecostal church on
Cape Cod pastored by Joseph de Grace, Daddy Grace's elder brother,
and that in the early days. They enjoyed discussing the
(15:36):
Bible together when Daddy Grace would visit Nola Lock's house.
Nola Lock's house the one he bought with the trash
collection earnings. It yielded another clue. I was on ancestry
dot Com looking through some old census records from the
nineteen twenties and thirties. The house that Nola Lock owned
it was right next to a house owned by Caesar Grace,
(15:58):
Daddy Grace's older brother. I had heard their families were close,
that Caesar's daughter and Nola Locke's daughter my Nana called
each other Prima's cousins. This in itself didn't prove anything.
It's customary for Kate Burdian's to call each other family,
even if the relationship isn't blood. I still call my parents'
(16:20):
friends TiO and Tia. But it did help explain what
happened later. When Daddy Grace asked Nola Lock's daughter my
Nana to go out on the road with him as
part of his church that man.
Speaker 7 (16:34):
Showed up on the farm thinking he could talk to
your grandmother. My father would have no part of it,
and then he would go into speaking creole where he
would say, showing him the axe and saying, you know
this is the axe, I'll sharpen it on your head.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Daddy Grace would have been in his mid forties, and
here he was asking Nola Lock's teenage daughter to leave
home and join his church and travel with him unaccompanied,
without even asking permission from her father. Daddy Grace had
to have known that this was not appropriate behavior and
(17:14):
something Nola Lock would not have liked. No wonder Nola
Lock was so enraged he threatened Daddy Grace with an axe.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Why
Nola Lock in Daddy Grace's lives diverged? Why are families diverged?
(17:37):
My great grandfather he was a conservative man. After having
spent years disconnected from his own family, traveling around the globe,
working and searching for a home, he was happy to
stay in Massachusetts, working his farm, running his businesses, raising
his children, and living a stable, if modest life. In contrast,
(18:01):
Daddy Grace was always looking outward, far from New Bedford.
He didn't seem interested in settling into the role of
a family man. He had a burning desire to spread
the gospel far and wide. In nineteen twelve, after just
a few years of marriage, he left his wife and
two young children, hit the road and traveled the country
(18:22):
and the world, refining his evangelical message. The decisions he
made his life must have seemed truly wild to my
great grandfather. Daddy Grace had his own style, and it
wasn't traditional. It was flamboyant. His hair was long, he
wore colorful clothes, and he wasn't afraid to show off
(18:45):
his success. I'm sure that got people talking and that
he quickly realized that he was outgrowing New Bedford. I
can relate. Growing up in New Bedford. I always felt different. Yeah,
I hung out on the beach and participate in all
the traditional Cape Verdian activities, but I would also skip
school and take the bus to New York City for
(19:06):
the day to shop and discover the latest music and fashions.
By this time I got to high school, I knew
that if I wanted to do anything creative, I need
to leave. I needed to explore outside of the fish
bowl of the Cape Verdian American community. Like Daddy Grace,
I needed to find my place in the world among
(19:30):
the many pieces of Daddy Grace. Material I've collected is
a copy of his nineteen fourteen Declaration of intention to
become an American citizen. I've studied it trying to understand
more about this man from the few details listed, like,
for example, how at the time he was employed as
a cook, that he renounced any allegiance to the Republic
(19:54):
of Portugal, that he was thirty one, five foot eight
and one hundred and sixty six pounds, that his skin
color was black, but that he had a light complexion.
Knowing how complicated identity can be for Cape Verdians in America,
this last part was especially interesting to me. How Daddy
Grace viewed himself was a big source of controversy around
(20:18):
him at the time, something both black and white Americans
had trouble wrapping their heads around. In nineteen fifty two,
Daddy Grace was featured in a piece in Ebony magazine.
He told the writer, I am not a Negro. I
am white by race. But he also tells the same reporter,
I am a colorless bishop. Sometimes I'm black, sometimes I'm white.
(20:42):
I preach to all races. I wonder what Ebony readers,
who were predominantly black would have made of this statement.
Did Daddy Grace think that by claiming to be white
that would take him further? Was he a race denier
or did he just understand the power of a life
little controversy. I can understand why people might have thought
(21:04):
that when they heard that quote. There were Cape Verdians who,
thanks to colonialism, were brainwashed to believe that they were Portuguese.
And of course many of us do have Portuguese blood.
But I don't think that's what Daddy Grace meant. Daddy
Grace did not consider himself a black American. He considered
himself Cape Verdian because Kabalvid was still a colony of Portugal.
(21:29):
Daddy Grace came to America on a Portuguese passport, but
he didn't look like how Americans thought a Portuguese man looked.
He didn't look white, he didn't look European. He had
curly hair, light brown skin, and he was always dressed
to the nines with a three piece suit, a ten
gallon hat and his jewels. He also spoke with an accent,
(21:53):
which further confused how others perceived him. And because of that,
I think he was misunderstood by temporary Americans whose own
views of race didn't allow much room for nuance. Throughout
his time in America, Daddy Grace's racial categorization changed based
(22:13):
on whoever was filling out the paperwork. Immigration listed him
as black African from Portugal on his nineteen oh four arrival.
On the nineteen ten census, he was listed as Mulatto,
but his nineteen eighteen draft card says Negro, and his
nineteen thirty two marriage license lists him as Caucasian. No wonder,
(22:37):
Daddy Grace said he was colorless. He saw right through
the absurdity of the system and perhaps saw the opportunity
to define himself on his own terms. This seemingly arbitrary
racial categorization imposed by other people was actually quite common,
(22:58):
and so wrestling with identity race was something that he
and all Cape Verdian immigrants were very familiar with. These
immigrants were escaping a system of white supremacy and colonialism
only to arrive in America and see how Black Americans
were being violently oppressed through racist Jim Crow laws in
(23:19):
the horrific terror of lynching, and the people doing the
lynching didn't care about where you were born or how
you identified In August of nineteen twenty one, it was
reported that a mob threatened to lynch three quote Cape
verd Island negroes on Cape cod who had been charged
(23:39):
with a criminal assault on a white woman. This was
the world they needed to figure out how to position
themselves in to survive and to thrive.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
They were arriving at the height of racial misgenation and
de facto segregation in this country.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
That's Marilyn and again, nobody had.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Any interest in recognizing them as Cape Verdians as a
separate identity. All they saw was black or white, and
so they were treated with the same level of discrimination, prejudice,
and hostility as African Americans or other people of color
in this country.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Other Americans didn't understand Cape Verdians in our rich multi
ethnic identities. What island you were from, what type of
creole you spoke, what's your family name? That was what
was discussed, not just your skin color.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
It was so uncomfortable, even oppressive for Cape Verdeans to
arrive here and just being categorized by other people in
ways that weren't even recognizable to themselves, let alone to
the rest of society. And it's a kind of a
(25:01):
rature of who you are.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
This still feels true to me, a third generation Cape
Ritian American. Where do you actually fit in?
Speaker 5 (25:13):
Daddy Grace, in his interview in Ebony magazine, said, I
am a colorless man. I am a colorless bishop. And
to me, that's like just so Cape Ridian. He's enhancing
his black side and his white side, and he's bringing
(25:33):
it all together. I think that Cape Verdeans were actually
pioneers of how to navigate the waters of American pluralism.
They've challenged these notions of race, color, ethnicity, and identity
well before anyone else, any other population in this country
(25:58):
that I know of.
Speaker 8 (26:01):
So basically, the intentionality behind why folks would choose to
call themselves cape Verdian but then not claiming black as
a race or saying that they are Portuguese. Why is that?
Is it because of the desire to have proximity to
whiteness or wanting to hold on to white supremacist ideals.
(26:22):
So I always talk about intentionality as it relates to
identity of our people.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Doctor terzel Minev's is a professor of political science at
Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and because
she's also a Cape Verdian immigrant herself. She can give
context to the struggle Cape Verdian's face around identity in America.
Speaker 8 (26:48):
I think that it's an intergenerational conversation controversy or our
ancestors who arrived here in the late eighteen hundreds or
early nineteen hundreds and beyond, where segregation racism was just,
you know, the dominant conversation. Of course, you're going to
(27:09):
try to separate yourself from the Black American community because
of this notion. You see how Black Americans are being
treated and you're trying to distance yourself from that. But
then you know you're not white, and the other white
groups don't see you as being white. Not quite Black
(27:30):
American by choice and by force, but you're not Portuguese
or white. So then you stick to what you know
and you begin to rely on each other. And so
that's not to say it's wrong or right, it's just
what happened.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Times have changed since Daddy Grace and other elders came
to the United States, and Tarsa experienced the transformation of
her own identity within the racial construct of America. She
says much of this was thanks to the professors and
peers she was surrounded by at Clark Atlanta University.
Speaker 8 (28:07):
I'm very specific about saying that I'm a Black African woman.
That's how I see myself, and that is all due
to the socialization and the education that I received. Most
of the professors were black, but there were a very
diverse group of black people from the United States and
also from many of different places in the diaspora and
(28:28):
the continent of Africa as well. All through those years,
I was able to be grounded in what I wanted
my identity to look like.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
I was born here in the United States, and I've
always identified as a black woman, but I also see
myself very much as a Cape Verdian woman. By the
time we got to my generation, Cape Verdian Americans had
experienced a century of oppression in the United States and
had been fighting alongside black and African diaspora Americans for
(28:59):
a dis dis mantling of structural racism. And I grew
up in the hip hop generation, where principles like pan
Africanism and knowledge of self led me to discover my
ancestral roots, unravel the heinous system of the Afro Atlantic
slave trade, and explore the deep connection of those entangled
(29:20):
in it. But identity is complicated. As soon as you
define what it means to you, society and people in
general impose their perception of you onto you. So there's
this kind of internal and external negotiation of determining exactly
who you are. It's a never ending cycle that starts
(29:44):
with the question what are you. I took my first
trip to Cubovid in two thousand and five, and since
then I've been back many times, spending time there seeing
the things my papa talked about in Parson, understanding a
bit deeper how hard it must have been for my
(30:07):
ancestors to leave their home and try to have a
better life. All of that has helped me to figure
out who I am in a way I never could
in the United States. Cabovid feels like home to me,
but I was born and raised in America. So when
I'm in Caubovid, my style, my accent, and many of
(30:29):
the ways in which I operate make me stand out.
So that question what are you? I can't escape it.
In Kapovedi, either Cape Verdeans in Cabalvid see me as
their American cousin. They see me as someone who is
not native to the islands. They call me things like Portuguez,
(30:50):
or laugh at me when I spoke Creole because it
gets mixed up with Portuguese, which I also speak. Or
they would even call me white girl. But I'm Kenya
because I am light skinned. But here's the thing. Cape
Verdian's born in Kabulvid may not have these same issues
in the Islands, but just like Daddy Grace, as soon
(31:11):
as they leave, their own identities are also questioned.
Speaker 9 (31:16):
So I am cape Verdian. I was raised here in Praya,
cabu Verdi. My family everyone is cave Verdian.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
That's Simone Spencer. She's an artist and educator. I talked
with her in Praya when I was there last. Talking
with Simon helped me unpack some of the feelings that
I had about identity, race and perception.
Speaker 9 (31:39):
When you are hearing Kabu Verdi, you identify yourself as
cape Verdian, not as black or white. You only feel
the need to identify as either black or white once
you move out. I went to study in China and
that's when the identity thing came to me. Cave Verdin
(32:02):
is such a small country in the whole world that
when you go abroad, people don't even know about the country.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
So just being Cape Verdian was not enough.
Speaker 9 (32:15):
I had very, very very short hair, and because my
eyes are a bit slented, people would think I'm a
Chinese from the south and my name is Simone Spencer.
It's like an Irish surname, and I'm like, definitely not Irish.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
I have very curly hair and my skin is not
white at all. Why you have an Irish surname. It's colonialism,
by the way. It's colonialism.
Speaker 9 (32:43):
So then it's where the real searching for an identity came.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I can relate to this. Living in the Cape Verdian
bubble of New Bedford, no one ever thought that I
was anything but Cape Verdian. I mean, I went to
school with a gang of cousins. We all know each
other's families, and we all went to the same Cape
Verdian clubs. But after I left home, I got a
lot of confused expressions about my last name to Pina
(33:14):
and the way I looked. In New York City, everyone
spoke to me in Spanish and assumed I was Puerto
Rican or Dominican. I got that question again, what are you.
Anyone who's ever been asked us before knows how aggravating
it can be, especially because in my case, a lot
of people have never even heard of Kabovad. But there's
(33:38):
also something powerful and not being easily defined. Simoni feels
this too.
Speaker 9 (33:45):
It's something you can't describe. It's complicated. It's like being
the perfect spy. Yeah, because you are so ambiguous. It's
being everything and nothing, because you'll come from everywhere, but
it's nothing because on the world stage, almost nobody ever
(34:09):
heard of you.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
During one of my most recent trips to Kaboved I
tried to track down my ancestral records and Daddy Grace
is too. Maybe this would help me understand more about
where we both came from and either confirm or deny
that there is a blood relation. I visited the National
Archives in the capital city Praya, certain they could help,
(34:36):
but once I actually got inside, I ran into one
bureaucratic roadblock after another trying to access any records. They
took my email address, but I'm still waiting for information.
I was also hoping to finally make it to Brava,
the island where my ancestors and Daddy Grace are from
(34:56):
I wanted to see the place where my family called home,
and I wanted to visit the Catholic Church, which is
known for keeping reliable baptism records. I thought that would
definitely help me to confirm my family's history. But getting
to Brava is difficult, really difficult. It's the smallest of
(35:18):
the populated islands, with only around five thousand people. There
is no airport. You have to take a boat, and
the boats, for one reason or another, are often canceled.
This happens a lot. The same thing happened to me
the last three times I tried to make the journey.
(35:38):
So I'm trying to figure out options. Standing at the
travel agency and a room full of people all clamoring
and trying to get to Brava, and my friend says
to me, what are you doing. You're an American girl,
You have an American passport.
Speaker 7 (35:54):
Use it.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
You can use that passport to get you first in line,
and not just shook me. Because here I am with
people who've been waiting to get home for days, some
for weeks. This one is sick, this one's waiting to
bring money home, this one's bringing food. These are people
with real struggles, real issues, and I'm dealing with first
(36:18):
world problems. The average Cape Verdian salary is around one
hundred and fifty dollars a month, making it economically impossible
for people to survive without remittances from relatives that are overseas,
and one hundred plus years after my ancestors fled, it's
still easier for a Cape Verdian to travel abroad than
(36:42):
to find reliable and safe into island transit to Brava.
Not until that moment did I ever think of myself
as privileged. I grew up poor on welfare, eating government
cheese and powdered milk. My mother worked nights a latchkey kid,
but my mother didn't have to get on a flight
(37:03):
or a boat to come home or immigrate to find
work in Praia. Not only did I feel the sting
of privilege, but I also felt survivor's guilt. Because my
ancestors sacrificed so much, I had opportunities and access to
resources that most people in Kabovid can only dream of.
(37:26):
I never did get to Brava. I felt like a failure,
like I let my ancestors down, but also my team
back in New York. I had traveled across the Atlantic
and had failed to find any new information on not
only my family but Daddy Grace. I was no closer
(37:48):
to proving or disproving my relation to him. After I
got back to the States, I couldn't stop thinking about
my trip and everything that I had brought up. I
was searching for answers, but came back with more questions.
I still didn't have the origin story, my origin story,
(38:12):
or Daddy Grace's. I sat down with my friend Darryl Stewart,
who's also a producer on this show, to help me
unpack some of the deep feelings that came up from
me about race, identity and how people's roots and stories
get lost over the generations.
Speaker 10 (38:32):
So I'm Black American, identify as Black American, and unfortunately
for me, we can only trace our ancestry back. But
so far we know that our ancestors were from the
Geechee Island area, that they were slaves brought in off
of the coast of Carolinas.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
But that's pretty much.
Speaker 10 (38:53):
Oh, we know. Can you talk a little bit about
connecting to your ancestry?
Speaker 7 (38:59):
How was that shit?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
How you see the world today living in a place
like New Bedford, where most of the black people are
Cape Verdian. I didn't think about it as much when
I lived there, because you know, I was among everybody's
pretty much the same. It wasn't until I moved out
of the area that I started to have more questions
(39:23):
about my identity, or at the very least, have questions
about how other people perceived me, because when I was
growing up, there were never any questions. Nobody ever was like, oh,
are you mixed? So yes, being Cape Verdian I quickly
realized was a big part of my identity, right, and
that is something that's different from being Black American and
(39:44):
you're having what you can trace of your ancestral roots here.
But upon a further investigation of what it means to
be Cape Verdian, you know, you quickly realize that I
can only go back so far to trace my family lineage. Like, yes,
we from a place that is in Africa and has
(40:04):
its own cultural identity, its own language. But Cape Verdians
wouldn't even exist if it wasn't from the slave trade,
so we cannot trace our ancestral roots either.
Speaker 10 (40:17):
Do you think that's where Daddy Grace struggled with his identity.
What do you think about that.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
I do think that Daddy Grace was an outcast within
the Cape Verdian community.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Why.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I think he was rejected because I think Kate Verdians
felt he was too audacious, not humble, just ostentatious with
the display of his money. I think also some of
his ways in which he operated people were, you know,
really questioned, like the fact that he was surrounded by
(40:55):
a lot of attendants. He didn't give conservative cape Verdian man.
He gave flamboyant, unapologetic I'm gonna be me and you
were going to recognize that I am a very wealthy
man and I'm not gonna hide at I think that
he had to have struggled with that. I think that
(41:15):
even if outwardly he might never have said, like, oh,
I feel rejected by the Cape Verdian community. And it
wasn't just the Cape Verdian community. He was rejected by
the black community too, and he was obviously rejected by
the white community. So I think he had to have
had an unshakeable belief in himself. He really felt that
(41:37):
I'm here to spread God's word. This is my mission.
He even says in some of his teachings that he
was just being persecuted the same way Jesus was.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
And you know what, shout out to my mother.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
She used to say that too.
Speaker 10 (41:49):
She used to say, I don't know why you kids
are so concerned about what other people think because they
talked about Jesus.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
So guess what people are going to talk about you too.
Speaker 10 (42:00):
Move into your purpose.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
That's exactly what Daddy Gray said.
Speaker 10 (42:04):
There is another side to this right where people are like,
I'm successful, I made it, my bills are paid, my
life is wonderful. You know, fuck everybody who who doesn't
like me or who didn't support me, etc. This is
my time to shine. But I think it gets complicated
for us, right, people of color. So much of our
(42:26):
identity is steeped in family and community, right, and we do,
many of us in some ways, we don't feel fulfilled
until we have the co sign right of family, of community,
of et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this is
(42:48):
my final question for you.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
What does your Cape Verdean heritage mean to you? That's
a serious question, Darryl, so serious a question that I
couldn't give Darryl a concise answer. But I kept coming
back to those days spent with my grandparents, learning about
the ways of the old country, tending to the garden
(43:13):
and the animals, Sitting around the table with my extended
family as they laughed, playing cards for pennies and telling stories.
I thought about the feeling of Sodi and how Cape
Verdeans in the diaspora are always longing for home, and
how those in Kabulvid are always yearning to be reunited
(43:35):
with their loved ones spread across the globe. I also
kept coming back to what Simoni had said about being
a spy. Cape Verdians have a unique way of blending it. Oftentimes,
unless someone comes out and says it, you won't even
know that their roots are in cabol Vid. People like
actors Michael Beach and Anika Nanni Rose, or Congressmen Haki Jeffries,
(44:01):
or jazz musicians Horace Silver and Paul Gonzalves, the disco
group the Tavars and rapper coy lay over the generations.
Our identity merges with Black Americans, although we never forget
our Cape Verdian heritage. And then, of course, I thought
(44:22):
about Daddy Grace. Daddy Grace was a citizen of the world.
He didn't see himself in the same racial construct that
we see ourselves here in America. Plus, as a man
of God, he knew race didn't mean a thing when
it comes to being saved. Right before his death, Daddy
(44:42):
Grace recorded a live sermon. There's this section I especially
like where he gives us clues about how he saw himself.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
And I'm on my way, however, and I'm there now,
I'm every aware, no where I am now, I'm everywhere
right now. Don't you say, God, He's everywhere. I'm everywhere.
(45:29):
All you gotta do think of me, love me.
Speaker 7 (45:38):
Ready is to go with me.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Where I am.
Speaker 7 (45:41):
You there.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
And the people, well, they were ready to go with him.
That's next time. Sweet Daddy Grace is a production of
iHeart Podcasts Enforce, a media group. This show is hosted
by by me Marcy de Pina. It's written and produced
by Marissa Brown and Me. Our story editors are Darryl Stewart,
(46:09):
Duncan Riedel, and Zarren Burnett. Editing, sound design and theme
music by Jonathan Washington. Original music by Enrique Silva of
Acasia Mayor. Show cover art by Viviana Salgado of Studio
Creative Group, fact checking by Austin Thompson. Our executive producers
(46:33):
are Marcy Depina and Jason English. Special Thanks to Will Pearson,
Nikki Ettore, Ali Perry, Tamika Campbell, and Lulu Phillip of iHeartMedia,
and all of my family members who talked to me
for this show, my ancestors, the United House of Prayer
for All People, and the countless number of people who
(46:56):
shared their memories of Sweet Daddy Grace with me. Thanks
also to doctor Marie Dollum and doctor Danielle brun Sigler,
whose academic work on Sweet Daddy Grace has been incredibly helpful.
And finally, I want to thank Bishop Grace himself for
choosing me to tell his story. For more information on
(47:17):
Bishop Charles M. Grace, check out the website Sweet Daddy
Grace and follow me at Marcy Depina on all social
platforms
So daddie is one of those words in cape Verdian
creole that doesn't have a direct English translation. Roughly, it
means missing someone or something, but it's deeper than that.
It's a longing that feels more like a whole, like
a part of your soul is gone. There are many
songs written about this, the most famous, of course, being
(00:27):
by Sesadia Avora, the queen of cape Verdian music. Anyone
can have this feeling of sodad, but for those of
us in the cape Verdian diaspora, it takes on a
very specific meaning because no matter where you live now
or where you were born, all cape Verdians have this
nostalgic feeling. It's a yearning to be in capleverd or
(00:50):
to be with the people who have left, or with
who you've left behind. I'm cape Verdian and on my
dad's side, he has a huge family, but for simplicity's sake,
they're two branches, the Graces and the Dapinas. My great grandfather,
Manuel Grace immigrated to America around the same time as
(01:11):
Daddy Grace, which was the beginning of the twentieth century.
I never met him. He died long before I was born,
but I did know my dad's mother, Lydia Grace Depina,
and his father, Jonathan Depina Senior, who I called Papa.
I adored him. He and my Nana often took care
of me when my parents were working, and I spent
(01:34):
hours with them, happily tagging along behind Papa when he
bent his chickens or helping Nana plant perfect rows of beans,
cal and carrots. I still remember Papa saying to Kenya,
the most important thing in this country is to have
your own land and to pass it on to your children.
(01:55):
I was a curious child, and one of my favorite
things to do with him was to take long walks
and ask him questions about his life back in Cablevere.
He came to the US when he was six on
a schooner named the Volante. I loved hearing about his
childhood back in Cablevert the way the mountains of Fontana's
always sat shrouded in clouds, or the beauty of the
(02:18):
flowers and the people. Listening to these stories made me
feel transported, my own imagination filling in the gaps of
what his life had been like. To me, Cableverd was
a place of wonder, a place I felt so connected to,
a place I could not wait to experience myself. But
(02:38):
within all of that, what I most remember was a
feeling of my papa's mixed emotions, because within his stories
about life on Bravo, I heard a tinge of sadness
in his voice. And when I'd asked my Papa if
he missed Cablvert and if he wanted to go back,
he'd look at me and say, for what, I'm mercy
(03:00):
to Pena and from iHeart podcasts enforce the media group,
this is sweet, Daddy, Grace.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
You're glad, you're being happy.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Bow, thank, You're glad.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Ahead and they laugh against happy brown and crying, we're.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
O b ing.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Daddy immigrated to the United States from Kabovid, just like
my grandfather. It was a country that both then and now,
not many Americans outside the diaspora know much about. But
to get to know Bishop Grace, you have to know
where he came from. The Kapoveti Islands are located about
(04:19):
three hundred and fifty miles off the coast of Senegal
in the Atlantic Ocean. In Portuguese, Kabovid means green cape,
which is quite a bit of a misnomer, as the
country is not particularly green. The islands are situated in
the crossroads of two of the driest trade winds in
the world, so there is very little rain, and several
(04:42):
of the islands are basically deserts. Capplevedy is made up
of ten islands, nine of which are inhabited, and while
they are proudly connected as one country, each is a
little different. Each speaks its own dialect of Creole, for example,
and the cultures are a little different too. The people
of Santiago, the largest island, are known for the music
(05:04):
of batucu, a form of drumming and dancing that is
primarily done by women. Sanvicentz is known for its carnival,
but it is also deeply influenced by the British, who
used the island as a coal refueling station in the
early eighteen hundreds. Embravo, where my family is from, is
(05:28):
the smallest island, known for its hospitality nationally revered poet
Eugenio Tavars, as well as its waterfalls and flowers. We
are most united, perhaps by the fact that at its
very essence, to be Cape Verdean means to have roots
from around the globe, because before Portuguese explorers landed there
(05:51):
in the mid fifteenth century, the Caboverti Islands were actually uninhabited,
and as was the case during this time period, the
Portuguese government was interested in two things, producing sugar and
enslaving Africans to do it. But the land was so
dry the sugar crops failed, and the Portuguese realized that
(06:16):
their new colony was actually much more useful as a
port in their slave trade, which was quickly expanding. Many
Africans brought to Kabulvid were sent on slave ships to
the Americas, but many also stayed. Some were enslaved to
work for Portuguese landholders, and others escaped into the mountains
(06:38):
where they formed their own communities, which still exists today.
So Cape Verdean Creole culture developed. As these populations African
European Middle Eastern intermingled to become something very much its own. Economically, however,
Kablevid was turning into a tough acquisition for the Portuguese.
(07:02):
After around a century of colonization, the land could no
longer grow much like the indigo they had used to
trade for enslaved Africans, and by the late eighteen hundreds,
the slave trade itself had ended, so the colonizers abandoned
the islands and left the people of Kabove to fend
(07:23):
for themselves. Many people suffered horribly. They were literally dying
of starvation and dehydration. The islands experienced chronic droughts, where
sometimes fifty percent of the population would die. Many Cape
Verdians were forced to leave, trying to make whatever money
(07:44):
they could to send back home to feed their families.
Many never returned. The main way out was on railing ships.
The eighteen hundreds were at height of the whaling industry,
and Cape Verdians played a big part as crews on
(08:05):
the American owned boats. They were known for their courage, work, ethic,
and maritime skills. Remember Moby Dick. It was published in
eighteen fifty one and one of the harpooners on board
Dago is thought to be Cape Verdian. But eventually the
work dried up.
Speaker 5 (08:25):
When whaling went into decline in the United States, was
harder to get young Yankees to serve as crew on
whaling vessels.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
That's my stepmom. Marilyn Halter again, scholar of Cape Verdian
American history and professor emerita at Boston University.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
So when they would stop in the Cape Verde Islands.
By the late nineteenth century, they were eager to find
people to man these ships.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Cape Verdian men bought old whaling boats, prepared and started
what was called the packet trade. Now Cape Verdian owned
and operated ships would crisscross the Atlantic, bringing supplies from
the United States back to Cobblevid and bringing immigrants to
New Bedford, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. Because of this,
(09:19):
the first voluntary African immigrants to America were Cape Verdeans.
This ended up giving them an advantage when they arrived,
they still had community.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Really, unlike any immigrant group, white or black, they were
the only population to actually have control over their means
of passage to this country. And when you contrast that
with the other African immigrants who came here involuntarily, the
(09:52):
slave population, who had absolutely no control over anything in
their lives. There was a lot of cultural and community support.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Part of that support meant access to work, though often
the kind of jobs available were the ones no one
else wanted.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
There was such a racial and ethnic hierarchy that the
only jobs for them was at the lowest rung of
the ladder, so the Irish got the best jobs, and
then the Portuguese and the French Canadians, and then you know,
Cape Verdians were at the bottom of the ladder. There
(10:32):
was work at the stack textile mills, on the Cranberry brogs,
and in maritime related occupations such as longshoremen and cooks
and other kinds of dock workers.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Details are scarce about Daddy Grace's immigration story to the US.
We know he had come over from the island of
Brava and landed in New Bedford in nineteen oh four
on a ship called the Louisa. His parents and at
least seven siblings were already there waiting for him. The
New Bedford Evening Standard wrote about the Louisa's arrival. It
(11:13):
mentioned one passenger who looked quote every inch a dude
with his trousers carefully pressed in an immaculate shirt front.
I'd like to hope that was our Marcellino. I get
the feeling he always stood out. He first made his
living in America, like basically all Cape Verdian immigrants did,
(11:36):
working various jobs. He picked Cranberry's in the bogs, a
job he apparently hated so much he threw down his
wheelbarrow and quit. He also sold patent medicines, ran a
grocery store, and worked as a cook in a local
restaurant and later on on the railways. My own great grandfather,
(11:58):
Manuel Grace, the one and I never met, arrived in
the United States around the same time as Daddy Grace,
and in some ways their stories were similar, including the
fact that they were both from Brava and both named Grace.
Speaker 6 (12:13):
The way it was explained to me by Uncle Abel
was that he found out that his father was being promiscuous.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
That's my cousin Jonathan. Again from what Jonathan has been told.
Our great grandfather, who everyone called Nola Locke, left Kabovid
when he was just seventeen years old.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
He had told his mother before he had left and
gone to school, and I guess during the day she
confronted him when he was coming home that his father
was pitching rocks at him, telling him, don't come back
here no more. One of the times that he was hit,
he was hitting the head and then he went down
where there was a whaler stocking up, and that was
(12:52):
his first time that he had left home.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
My aunt Judy Jonathan's mother picks up the story from there.
He had no money.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
He came on a whaling ship working and his destination
was the United States. However, he jumped ship in Bermuda
and worked on a sugar plantation there to earn money
to continue to travel. Sailed around South America and went
to Hawaii, and then he went to San Francisco. He
(13:24):
was there during the nineteen oh six Great Earthquake.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
After the earthquake, my great grandfather got a job on
the railroads and made his way east across the country.
His final destination a small seaside town outside New Bedford
called Mattapoisa, where he had family nearby. Life there suited him.
He got a job doing manual labor and soon saved
(13:49):
enough money to buy a small pig farm and a house.
He was around forty old for a bachelor those days,
and was ready to settle down.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Then.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
He was not a young man, and I believed that
he had an arranged marriage with a Cape Fridian woman
from Brava.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
With just a horse and buggy, he started a small
business collecting trash in the neighborhood, and he eventually won
a contract with the town But when I asked my
aunt to describe Nola Lock for me, she mostly talked
about his spirituality, and he was very, very.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
Much into his religion. In our dining room, we had
a large farmhouse kitchen and we always ate there. I
don't ever recall eating in the dining room, but what
I do remember is that was where my grandfather had
his Bible, and that he sat there and read the Bible.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
So food wasn't.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Served there, but the Word of God was served there.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
My aunt Judy stories got me thinking about how similar
Nola Lock and Daddy Grace's lives must have been in America,
At least at first. They worked the same blue collar
jobs that all Cape Verdians did. They went to the
same shops. They both married Cape Verdian women and started families.
But where we related. I started asking other family members
(15:15):
what they knew or who I should talk to. One
person told me that years before Daddy Grace founded the
United House of Prayer, he would sometimes preach at the
church that Nola Loc attended, the Portuguese Pentecostal church on
Cape Cod pastored by Joseph de Grace, Daddy Grace's elder brother,
and that in the early days. They enjoyed discussing the
(15:36):
Bible together when Daddy Grace would visit Nola Lock's house.
Nola Lock's house the one he bought with the trash
collection earnings. It yielded another clue. I was on ancestry
dot Com looking through some old census records from the
nineteen twenties and thirties. The house that Nola Lock owned
it was right next to a house owned by Caesar Grace,
(15:58):
Daddy Grace's older brother. I had heard their families were close,
that Caesar's daughter and Nola Locke's daughter my Nana called
each other Prima's cousins. This in itself didn't prove anything.
It's customary for Kate Burdian's to call each other family,
even if the relationship isn't blood. I still call my parents'
(16:20):
friends TiO and Tia. But it did help explain what
happened later. When Daddy Grace asked Nola Lock's daughter my
Nana to go out on the road with him as
part of his church that man.
Speaker 7 (16:34):
Showed up on the farm thinking he could talk to
your grandmother. My father would have no part of it,
and then he would go into speaking creole where he
would say, showing him the axe and saying, you know
this is the axe, I'll sharpen it on your head.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Daddy Grace would have been in his mid forties, and
here he was asking Nola Lock's teenage daughter to leave
home and join his church and travel with him unaccompanied,
without even asking permission from her father. Daddy Grace had
to have known that this was not appropriate behavior and
(17:14):
something Nola Lock would not have liked. No wonder Nola
Lock was so enraged he threatened Daddy Grace with an axe.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Why
Nola Lock in Daddy Grace's lives diverged? Why are families diverged?
(17:37):
My great grandfather he was a conservative man. After having
spent years disconnected from his own family, traveling around the globe,
working and searching for a home, he was happy to
stay in Massachusetts, working his farm, running his businesses, raising
his children, and living a stable, if modest life. In contrast,
(18:01):
Daddy Grace was always looking outward, far from New Bedford.
He didn't seem interested in settling into the role of
a family man. He had a burning desire to spread
the gospel far and wide. In nineteen twelve, after just
a few years of marriage, he left his wife and
two young children, hit the road and traveled the country
(18:22):
and the world, refining his evangelical message. The decisions he
made his life must have seemed truly wild to my
great grandfather. Daddy Grace had his own style, and it
wasn't traditional. It was flamboyant. His hair was long, he
wore colorful clothes, and he wasn't afraid to show off
(18:45):
his success. I'm sure that got people talking and that
he quickly realized that he was outgrowing New Bedford. I
can relate. Growing up in New Bedford. I always felt different. Yeah,
I hung out on the beach and participate in all
the traditional Cape Verdian activities, but I would also skip
school and take the bus to New York City for
(19:06):
the day to shop and discover the latest music and fashions.
By this time I got to high school, I knew
that if I wanted to do anything creative, I need
to leave. I needed to explore outside of the fish
bowl of the Cape Verdian American community. Like Daddy Grace,
I needed to find my place in the world among
(19:30):
the many pieces of Daddy Grace. Material I've collected is
a copy of his nineteen fourteen Declaration of intention to
become an American citizen. I've studied it trying to understand
more about this man from the few details listed, like,
for example, how at the time he was employed as
a cook, that he renounced any allegiance to the Republic
(19:54):
of Portugal, that he was thirty one, five foot eight
and one hundred and sixty six pounds, that his skin
color was black, but that he had a light complexion.
Knowing how complicated identity can be for Cape Verdians in America,
this last part was especially interesting to me. How Daddy
Grace viewed himself was a big source of controversy around
(20:18):
him at the time, something both black and white Americans
had trouble wrapping their heads around. In nineteen fifty two,
Daddy Grace was featured in a piece in Ebony magazine.
He told the writer, I am not a Negro. I
am white by race. But he also tells the same reporter,
I am a colorless bishop. Sometimes I'm black, sometimes I'm white.
(20:42):
I preach to all races. I wonder what Ebony readers,
who were predominantly black would have made of this statement.
Did Daddy Grace think that by claiming to be white
that would take him further? Was he a race denier
or did he just understand the power of a life
little controversy. I can understand why people might have thought
(21:04):
that when they heard that quote. There were Cape Verdians who,
thanks to colonialism, were brainwashed to believe that they were Portuguese.
And of course many of us do have Portuguese blood.
But I don't think that's what Daddy Grace meant. Daddy
Grace did not consider himself a black American. He considered
himself Cape Verdian because Kabalvid was still a colony of Portugal.
(21:29):
Daddy Grace came to America on a Portuguese passport, but
he didn't look like how Americans thought a Portuguese man looked.
He didn't look white, he didn't look European. He had
curly hair, light brown skin, and he was always dressed
to the nines with a three piece suit, a ten
gallon hat and his jewels. He also spoke with an accent,
(21:53):
which further confused how others perceived him. And because of that,
I think he was misunderstood by temporary Americans whose own
views of race didn't allow much room for nuance. Throughout
his time in America, Daddy Grace's racial categorization changed based
(22:13):
on whoever was filling out the paperwork. Immigration listed him
as black African from Portugal on his nineteen oh four arrival.
On the nineteen ten census, he was listed as Mulatto,
but his nineteen eighteen draft card says Negro, and his
nineteen thirty two marriage license lists him as Caucasian. No wonder,
(22:37):
Daddy Grace said he was colorless. He saw right through
the absurdity of the system and perhaps saw the opportunity
to define himself on his own terms. This seemingly arbitrary
racial categorization imposed by other people was actually quite common,
(22:58):
and so wrestling with identity race was something that he
and all Cape Verdian immigrants were very familiar with. These
immigrants were escaping a system of white supremacy and colonialism
only to arrive in America and see how Black Americans
were being violently oppressed through racist Jim Crow laws in
(23:19):
the horrific terror of lynching, and the people doing the
lynching didn't care about where you were born or how
you identified In August of nineteen twenty one, it was
reported that a mob threatened to lynch three quote Cape
verd Island negroes on Cape cod who had been charged
(23:39):
with a criminal assault on a white woman. This was
the world they needed to figure out how to position
themselves in to survive and to thrive.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
They were arriving at the height of racial misgenation and
de facto segregation in this country.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
That's Marilyn and again, nobody had.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Any interest in recognizing them as Cape Verdians as a
separate identity. All they saw was black or white, and
so they were treated with the same level of discrimination, prejudice,
and hostility as African Americans or other people of color
in this country.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Other Americans didn't understand Cape Verdians in our rich multi
ethnic identities. What island you were from, what type of
creole you spoke, what's your family name? That was what
was discussed, not just your skin color.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
It was so uncomfortable, even oppressive for Cape Verdeans to
arrive here and just being categorized by other people in
ways that weren't even recognizable to themselves, let alone to
the rest of society. And it's a kind of a
(25:01):
rature of who you are.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
This still feels true to me, a third generation Cape
Ritian American. Where do you actually fit in?
Speaker 5 (25:13):
Daddy Grace, in his interview in Ebony magazine, said, I
am a colorless man. I am a colorless bishop. And
to me, that's like just so Cape Ridian. He's enhancing
his black side and his white side, and he's bringing
(25:33):
it all together. I think that Cape Verdeans were actually
pioneers of how to navigate the waters of American pluralism.
They've challenged these notions of race, color, ethnicity, and identity
well before anyone else, any other population in this country
(25:58):
that I know of.
Speaker 8 (26:01):
So basically, the intentionality behind why folks would choose to
call themselves cape Verdian but then not claiming black as
a race or saying that they are Portuguese. Why is that?
Is it because of the desire to have proximity to
whiteness or wanting to hold on to white supremacist ideals.
(26:22):
So I always talk about intentionality as it relates to
identity of our people.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Doctor terzel Minev's is a professor of political science at
Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and because
she's also a Cape Verdian immigrant herself. She can give
context to the struggle Cape Verdian's face around identity in America.
Speaker 8 (26:48):
I think that it's an intergenerational conversation controversy or our
ancestors who arrived here in the late eighteen hundreds or
early nineteen hundreds and beyond, where segregation racism was just,
you know, the dominant conversation. Of course, you're going to
(27:09):
try to separate yourself from the Black American community because
of this notion. You see how Black Americans are being
treated and you're trying to distance yourself from that. But
then you know you're not white, and the other white
groups don't see you as being white. Not quite Black
(27:30):
American by choice and by force, but you're not Portuguese
or white. So then you stick to what you know
and you begin to rely on each other. And so
that's not to say it's wrong or right, it's just
what happened.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Times have changed since Daddy Grace and other elders came
to the United States, and Tarsa experienced the transformation of
her own identity within the racial construct of America. She
says much of this was thanks to the professors and
peers she was surrounded by at Clark Atlanta University.
Speaker 8 (28:07):
I'm very specific about saying that I'm a Black African woman.
That's how I see myself, and that is all due
to the socialization and the education that I received. Most
of the professors were black, but there were a very
diverse group of black people from the United States and
also from many of different places in the diaspora and
(28:28):
the continent of Africa as well. All through those years,
I was able to be grounded in what I wanted
my identity to look like.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
I was born here in the United States, and I've
always identified as a black woman, but I also see
myself very much as a Cape Verdian woman. By the
time we got to my generation, Cape Verdian Americans had
experienced a century of oppression in the United States and
had been fighting alongside black and African diaspora Americans for
(28:59):
a dis dis mantling of structural racism. And I grew
up in the hip hop generation, where principles like pan
Africanism and knowledge of self led me to discover my
ancestral roots, unravel the heinous system of the Afro Atlantic
slave trade, and explore the deep connection of those entangled
(29:20):
in it. But identity is complicated. As soon as you
define what it means to you, society and people in
general impose their perception of you onto you. So there's
this kind of internal and external negotiation of determining exactly
who you are. It's a never ending cycle that starts
(29:44):
with the question what are you. I took my first
trip to Cubovid in two thousand and five, and since
then I've been back many times, spending time there seeing
the things my papa talked about in Parson, understanding a
bit deeper how hard it must have been for my
(30:07):
ancestors to leave their home and try to have a
better life. All of that has helped me to figure
out who I am in a way I never could
in the United States. Cabovid feels like home to me,
but I was born and raised in America. So when
I'm in Caubovid, my style, my accent, and many of
(30:29):
the ways in which I operate make me stand out.
So that question what are you? I can't escape it.
In Kapovedi, either Cape Verdeans in Cabalvid see me as
their American cousin. They see me as someone who is
not native to the islands. They call me things like Portuguez,
(30:50):
or laugh at me when I spoke Creole because it
gets mixed up with Portuguese, which I also speak. Or
they would even call me white girl. But I'm Kenya
because I am light skinned. But here's the thing. Cape
Verdian's born in Kabulvid may not have these same issues
in the Islands, but just like Daddy Grace, as soon
(31:11):
as they leave, their own identities are also questioned.
Speaker 9 (31:16):
So I am cape Verdian. I was raised here in Praya,
cabu Verdi. My family everyone is cave Verdian.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
That's Simone Spencer. She's an artist and educator. I talked
with her in Praya when I was there last. Talking
with Simon helped me unpack some of the feelings that
I had about identity, race and perception.
Speaker 9 (31:39):
When you are hearing Kabu Verdi, you identify yourself as
cape Verdian, not as black or white. You only feel
the need to identify as either black or white once
you move out. I went to study in China and
that's when the identity thing came to me. Cave Verdin
(32:02):
is such a small country in the whole world that
when you go abroad, people don't even know about the country.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
So just being Cape Verdian was not enough.
Speaker 9 (32:15):
I had very, very very short hair, and because my
eyes are a bit slented, people would think I'm a
Chinese from the south and my name is Simone Spencer.
It's like an Irish surname, and I'm like, definitely not Irish.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
I have very curly hair and my skin is not
white at all. Why you have an Irish surname. It's colonialism,
by the way. It's colonialism.
Speaker 9 (32:43):
So then it's where the real searching for an identity came.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I can relate to this. Living in the Cape Verdian
bubble of New Bedford, no one ever thought that I
was anything but Cape Verdian. I mean, I went to
school with a gang of cousins. We all know each
other's families, and we all went to the same Cape
Verdian clubs. But after I left home, I got a
lot of confused expressions about my last name to Pina
(33:14):
and the way I looked. In New York City, everyone
spoke to me in Spanish and assumed I was Puerto
Rican or Dominican. I got that question again, what are you.
Anyone who's ever been asked us before knows how aggravating
it can be, especially because in my case, a lot
of people have never even heard of Kabovad. But there's
(33:38):
also something powerful and not being easily defined. Simoni feels
this too.
Speaker 9 (33:45):
It's something you can't describe. It's complicated. It's like being
the perfect spy. Yeah, because you are so ambiguous. It's
being everything and nothing, because you'll come from everywhere, but
it's nothing because on the world stage, almost nobody ever
(34:09):
heard of you.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
During one of my most recent trips to Kaboved I
tried to track down my ancestral records and Daddy Grace
is too. Maybe this would help me understand more about
where we both came from and either confirm or deny
that there is a blood relation. I visited the National
Archives in the capital city Praya, certain they could help,
(34:36):
but once I actually got inside, I ran into one
bureaucratic roadblock after another trying to access any records. They
took my email address, but I'm still waiting for information.
I was also hoping to finally make it to Brava,
the island where my ancestors and Daddy Grace are from
(34:56):
I wanted to see the place where my family called home,
and I wanted to visit the Catholic Church, which is
known for keeping reliable baptism records. I thought that would
definitely help me to confirm my family's history. But getting
to Brava is difficult, really difficult. It's the smallest of
(35:18):
the populated islands, with only around five thousand people. There
is no airport. You have to take a boat, and
the boats, for one reason or another, are often canceled.
This happens a lot. The same thing happened to me
the last three times I tried to make the journey.
(35:38):
So I'm trying to figure out options. Standing at the
travel agency and a room full of people all clamoring
and trying to get to Brava, and my friend says
to me, what are you doing. You're an American girl,
You have an American passport.
Speaker 7 (35:54):
Use it.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
You can use that passport to get you first in line,
and not just shook me. Because here I am with
people who've been waiting to get home for days, some
for weeks. This one is sick, this one's waiting to
bring money home, this one's bringing food. These are people
with real struggles, real issues, and I'm dealing with first
(36:18):
world problems. The average Cape Verdian salary is around one
hundred and fifty dollars a month, making it economically impossible
for people to survive without remittances from relatives that are overseas,
and one hundred plus years after my ancestors fled, it's
still easier for a Cape Verdian to travel abroad than
(36:42):
to find reliable and safe into island transit to Brava.
Not until that moment did I ever think of myself
as privileged. I grew up poor on welfare, eating government
cheese and powdered milk. My mother worked nights a latchkey kid,
but my mother didn't have to get on a flight
(37:03):
or a boat to come home or immigrate to find
work in Praia. Not only did I feel the sting
of privilege, but I also felt survivor's guilt. Because my
ancestors sacrificed so much, I had opportunities and access to
resources that most people in Kabovid can only dream of.
(37:26):
I never did get to Brava. I felt like a failure,
like I let my ancestors down, but also my team
back in New York. I had traveled across the Atlantic
and had failed to find any new information on not
only my family but Daddy Grace. I was no closer
(37:48):
to proving or disproving my relation to him. After I
got back to the States, I couldn't stop thinking about
my trip and everything that I had brought up. I
was searching for answers, but came back with more questions.
I still didn't have the origin story, my origin story,
(38:12):
or Daddy Grace's. I sat down with my friend Darryl Stewart,
who's also a producer on this show, to help me
unpack some of the deep feelings that came up from
me about race, identity and how people's roots and stories
get lost over the generations.
Speaker 10 (38:32):
So I'm Black American, identify as Black American, and unfortunately
for me, we can only trace our ancestry back. But
so far we know that our ancestors were from the
Geechee Island area, that they were slaves brought in off
of the coast of Carolinas.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
But that's pretty much.
Speaker 10 (38:53):
Oh, we know. Can you talk a little bit about
connecting to your ancestry?
Speaker 7 (38:59):
How was that shit?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
How you see the world today living in a place
like New Bedford, where most of the black people are
Cape Verdian. I didn't think about it as much when
I lived there, because you know, I was among everybody's
pretty much the same. It wasn't until I moved out
of the area that I started to have more questions
(39:23):
about my identity, or at the very least, have questions
about how other people perceived me, because when I was
growing up, there were never any questions. Nobody ever was like, oh,
are you mixed? So yes, being Cape Verdian I quickly
realized was a big part of my identity, right, and
that is something that's different from being Black American and
(39:44):
you're having what you can trace of your ancestral roots here.
But upon a further investigation of what it means to
be Cape Verdian, you know, you quickly realize that I
can only go back so far to trace my family lineage. Like, yes,
we from a place that is in Africa and has
(40:04):
its own cultural identity, its own language. But Cape Verdians
wouldn't even exist if it wasn't from the slave trade,
so we cannot trace our ancestral roots either.
Speaker 10 (40:17):
Do you think that's where Daddy Grace struggled with his identity.
What do you think about that.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
I do think that Daddy Grace was an outcast within
the Cape Verdian community.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Why.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I think he was rejected because I think Kate Verdians
felt he was too audacious, not humble, just ostentatious with
the display of his money. I think also some of
his ways in which he operated people were, you know,
really questioned, like the fact that he was surrounded by
(40:55):
a lot of attendants. He didn't give conservative cape Verdian man.
He gave flamboyant, unapologetic I'm gonna be me and you
were going to recognize that I am a very wealthy
man and I'm not gonna hide at I think that
he had to have struggled with that. I think that
(41:15):
even if outwardly he might never have said, like, oh,
I feel rejected by the Cape Verdian community. And it
wasn't just the Cape Verdian community. He was rejected by
the black community too, and he was obviously rejected by
the white community. So I think he had to have
had an unshakeable belief in himself. He really felt that
(41:37):
I'm here to spread God's word. This is my mission.
He even says in some of his teachings that he
was just being persecuted the same way Jesus was.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
And you know what, shout out to my mother.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
She used to say that too.
Speaker 10 (41:49):
She used to say, I don't know why you kids
are so concerned about what other people think because they
talked about Jesus.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
So guess what people are going to talk about you too.
Speaker 10 (42:00):
Move into your purpose.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
That's exactly what Daddy Gray said.
Speaker 10 (42:04):
There is another side to this right where people are like,
I'm successful, I made it, my bills are paid, my
life is wonderful. You know, fuck everybody who who doesn't
like me or who didn't support me, etc. This is
my time to shine. But I think it gets complicated
for us, right, people of color. So much of our
(42:26):
identity is steeped in family and community, right, and we do,
many of us in some ways, we don't feel fulfilled
until we have the co sign right of family, of community,
of et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this is
(42:48):
my final question for you.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
What does your Cape Verdean heritage mean to you? That's
a serious question, Darryl, so serious a question that I
couldn't give Darryl a concise answer. But I kept coming
back to those days spent with my grandparents, learning about
the ways of the old country, tending to the garden
(43:13):
and the animals, Sitting around the table with my extended
family as they laughed, playing cards for pennies and telling stories.
I thought about the feeling of Sodi and how Cape
Verdeans in the diaspora are always longing for home, and
how those in Kabulvid are always yearning to be reunited
(43:35):
with their loved ones spread across the globe. I also
kept coming back to what Simoni had said about being
a spy. Cape Verdians have a unique way of blending it. Oftentimes,
unless someone comes out and says it, you won't even
know that their roots are in cabol Vid. People like
actors Michael Beach and Anika Nanni Rose, or Congressmen Haki Jeffries,
(44:01):
or jazz musicians Horace Silver and Paul Gonzalves, the disco
group the Tavars and rapper coy lay over the generations.
Our identity merges with Black Americans, although we never forget
our Cape Verdian heritage. And then, of course, I thought
(44:22):
about Daddy Grace. Daddy Grace was a citizen of the world.
He didn't see himself in the same racial construct that
we see ourselves here in America. Plus, as a man
of God, he knew race didn't mean a thing when
it comes to being saved. Right before his death, Daddy
(44:42):
Grace recorded a live sermon. There's this section I especially
like where he gives us clues about how he saw himself.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
And I'm on my way, however, and I'm there now,
I'm every aware, no where I am now, I'm everywhere
right now. Don't you say, God, He's everywhere. I'm everywhere.
(45:29):
All you gotta do think of me, love me.
Speaker 7 (45:38):
Ready is to go with me.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Where I am.
Speaker 7 (45:41):
You there.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
And the people, well, they were ready to go with him.
That's next time. Sweet Daddy Grace is a production of
iHeart Podcasts Enforce, a media group. This show is hosted
by by me Marcy de Pina. It's written and produced
by Marissa Brown and Me. Our story editors are Darryl Stewart,
(46:09):
Duncan Riedel, and Zarren Burnett. Editing, sound design and theme
music by Jonathan Washington. Original music by Enrique Silva of
Acasia Mayor. Show cover art by Viviana Salgado of Studio
Creative Group, fact checking by Austin Thompson. Our executive producers
(46:33):
are Marcy Depina and Jason English. Special Thanks to Will Pearson,
Nikki Ettore, Ali Perry, Tamika Campbell, and Lulu Phillip of iHeartMedia,
and all of my family members who talked to me
for this show, my ancestors, the United House of Prayer
for All People, and the countless number of people who
(46:56):
shared their memories of Sweet Daddy Grace with me. Thanks
also to doctor Marie Dollum and doctor Danielle brun Sigler,
whose academic work on Sweet Daddy Grace has been incredibly helpful.
And finally, I want to thank Bishop Grace himself for
choosing me to tell his story. For more information on
(47:17):
Bishop Charles M. Grace, check out the website Sweet Daddy
Grace and follow me at Marcy Depina on all social
platforms
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