How Caribbean Immigrants Built Safety Nets In New York with Dr. Tyesha Maddox
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Caribbean people know all too well that the story of migration doesn’t end at the border. Dr. Tyesha Maddox, Associate Professor at Fordham University, joins us for a conversation about the history of Caribbean mutual aid societies and benevolent associations that help communities upon their arrival in the US. We dig into what mutual aid actually means in Caribbean migration history: not charity, not a top-down savior model, but an egalitarian system where members build solutions together. Dr. Maddox connects Caribbean American mutual aid societies in New York to earlier Caribbean friendly societies after emancipation and to West African traditions of collective care. We talk burial and funeral funds as a dignified corrective to slavery’s violence, support during illness and injury that looks like early workers’ comp, and even maternity benefits that were well ahead of their time. We also get into susu and padna style rotating savings, and why trust is the real currency behind these networks.
Then we zoom out to the social and political power of these groups. They throw parties, organize trips, teach culture to children through auxiliaries, and help people become Caribbean in the diaspora, sometimes for the first time. We also place these organizations inside the New York landscape of Harlem, Garveyism, and Black political organizing, where Caribbean immigrants help shape the world many of us now take for granted. If you care about Caribbean diaspora community, Black history, New York history, or mutual aid today, this conversation offers a blueprint worth revisiting. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review if this made you think.
Tyesha Maddox is an Associate Professor at Fordham University in the Department of African & African American Studies. She received her PhD in History from New York University in 2016. She received a BA in History and Africana Studies and a MPS in Africana Studies both from Cornell University in 2006 and 2008. Her book, A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity (Penn Press, 2024) examines the significance of early twentieth century Anglophone Caribbean immigrant mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in New York City. In 2020, she co-edited a comprehensive resource guide and website titled "This is Not a Riot!" (www.notariot.com) to help contextualize the Black Lives Matter Uprisings of 2020 and place them in the historical radical tradition of Black protest in the US. She also serves as a key organizer for Mutual Aid NYC's Organizing Archive and Library as well as their Public History and Political Education Committee.
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