Hidden in Plain Sight: West Indians and Place-Making in New Bedford

The early twentieth century decline of American whaling facilitated a stream of Black immigration to the New England port city of New Bedford. These Black men, from the Caribbean islands of St. Eustatius and Bequia, constituted a small percentage of New Bedford’s overlapping Black diaspora but quickly established themselves in the “Whaling City” with the chain migration of kith and kin, businesses, and social and political associations. Applying social network analysis to census data, city directories and maps, oral history and rumors, and whaling crew logs, this paper elucidates the undertold stories, contributions, and histories of New Bedford’s West Indians. Hidden in plain sight in New Bedford, a seemingly unlikely place to study twentieth century Black migration, New Bedford’s small West Indian community articulated a vision of a multi-ethnic African America. A Black geographies focus on West Indians’ homemaking and placemaking strategies offers new perspectives on the routes of Black (im)migration and self-conscious transformations of racial-ethnic identities in shaping the Black communities of the Whaling City. Through these social and political actions, in collaboration with their African American neighbors, they reimagined what it means to be both immigrant and African American.