Part 2: The Caribbean Mosaics: A Home Away from Home

We continue our conversation with Dr. Fiona Vernal about an oral history project on the life and times of early West Indian settlers in the State of Connecticut. Dr. Vernal is an Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies,  and Director of the Center for Engaged, Public, Oral, and Community Histories (EPOCH) at the University of Connecticut.

In our previous episode, Dr. Vernal talked to us about her research and current exhibit called The Caribbean Mosaic:  A  Home Away From Home, which is an oral history of the Caribbean migration to Connecticut beginning in the 1940s. The exhibit opened on June 23rd in Hartford, Connecticut. 

In this episode, we're talking about some of the challenges facing this aging community of former migrant workers and their legacy, including:
 

• How to preserve the institutions they created {Fiona Vernal: "the importance of these organizations is now. Let's not wait until these organizations disappear and then we get really romantic about missing them. And let's say, these are the organizations that are on the ground, doing the work in the community that have the legitimacy and the authority to do some of this work and funds need to be flowing to us so that these agencies, subcontract with us to get some things done, [for example] to run tutoring programs that are culturally relevant..."

• Intervention to establish a functional and more updated leadership structure to advocate for and build financial support for the institutions.

• Encouraging the younger generation to embrace and protect the legacy. Dr. Vernal notes: "When we build organizations, whether we're like West Indian people or Nigerian people, or Cubans, whoever we are, [when] we build our community organizations, we have got to do succession planning." 

Biography

Dr. Fiona Vernal is Jamaican and grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. She is a graduate of Princeton and Yale, and teaches courses on pre-colonial, and colonial Africa, the history of South Africa, slavery, and the African diaspora. 

In addition to creating a number of exhibits on her research, including the one we are discussing today, The Caribbean Mosaics, Dr. Vernal has written extensively on her research and consults with the Connecticut Historical Society on oral history projects.  Her current exhibit, “A Home Away From Home” is an oral history of the migration of West Indians to Connecticut.