Caribbean Organizations pt 1

Outside of those that plan and carry out the carnival celebrations, there are a variety of other Caribbean organizations in Atlanta, including cricket and soccer clubs, a Caribbean theater group, and many cultural associations, such as Atlanta Jamaican Association and Dominica Atlanta Cultural Association. These organizations play a major part in developing a pan-ethnic Caribbean social network in Atlanta. They connected the earliest migrants, who arrived around the early 1990s when the population was beginning to grow, and helped them navigate the social landscapes of their new environment. Several respondents that migrated to Atlanta prior to the mid-1990s explained how finding out about the group from others and newspaper ads helped them connect with other Caribbean people in the area. The Atlanta Caribbean Association (ACA) has the longest history. ACA serves as an umbrella organization for the Caribbean groups and events in the Atlanta area. In the early 1990s, when the migration to the city began to surge, ACA was flourishing and at its peak, but has faded since then. In 2009, when I started my research in Atlanta, ACA membership had dwindled down to a handful of people.[1] The growth of the Caribbean community in Atlanta has been both a good and bad thing for ACA. The late 1990s saw a proliferation of island-specific groups, with Afro-Caribbean immigrants gravitating towards their island-specific organizations. With the influx of new Caribbean immigrants in the Atlanta area, each organization has accumulated a sizeable enough population to sustain an active membership.

The Georgia Caribbean American Heritage Coalition, Incorporated (GCAHC) is a recently created nonprofit organization that is making efforts to bring together Atlanta’s Caribbean community and to incorporate the community and its culture into the region. GCAHC was founded in 2006 in response to efforts to establish June as Caribbean American Heritage Month (CAHM). Under the leadership of Dr. Claire Nelson, the Institute for Caribbean Studies (ICS) in Washington, D.C. initiated the campaign to designate June as National Caribbean American Heritage Month recognizing the significance of Caribbean people and their descendants in the history and culture of the United States. ICS began their efforts to establish a National Caribbean American Heritage Month in 1999 with a letter to President Bill Clinton asking to recognize August as National Caribbean American Month. June officially became National Caribbean American Heritage Month when President Bush signed the proclamation on June 5, 2006.[2] One year later, GCAHC worked with State Representative Billy Mitchell of Stone Mountain to get the resolution adopted by the Georgia General Assembly. The Georgia General Assembly adopted the CAHM Resolution designating June as Caribbean American Heritage Month.[3]

The main objective of the GCAHC is to organize events in the Atlanta area in observation of CAHM. The founding president of the organization, Valrie Sanders, told me about the events that they organize in Atlanta for Caribbean American Heritage Month. Every year, since its inception, GCAHC has partnered with different Caribbean organizations and the libraries in the metropolitan area to put together events for CAHM.[4] The Atlanta Central Library and Auburn Avenue Library on African American Culture and History together host a Caribbean film festival. Throughout the month of June, GCAHC puts on a number of other activities including educational events, dinners, cultural shows, plays, advocacy events—such as getting a representative from the Carter Center to discuss their involvement in the Caribbean—and a small business seminar sponsored by the Small Business Association.

The month is kicked off in Atlanta City Hall with an opening reception that each year highlights a country or region of the Caribbean. When I attended the reception in 2010, they spotlighted the sister islands of Antigua and Barbuda. When I entered City Hall, it had a feel of a Caribbean market. Around the large room, Caribbean organizations had set up table exhibit, displaying their national culture, food, national costumes, and art. After taking a moment of silence for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the proclamation of President Obama recognizing June as Caribbean American Heritage Month was read. As the program progressed, which included musical performances, an awards ceremony, and fashion show, I noticed that the Mayor of Atlanta Kasim Reed, who took office in 2010, was absent, though the reception was held in City Hall. I was surprised because I had seen the mayors of Boston and New York on floats at each city’s Caribbean carnival, showing their support for the event to hopefully garner new supporters and voters among the community. Nancy Foner (2005: 148) states: "Attendance at the West Indian American Day Parade on Eastern Parkway has become a requirement for politicians seeking city and state office and those representing districts with large concentrations of West Indians." Mayor Reed instead sent one of his aides of Jamaican descent to read a letter. In it, he acknowledges the Caribbean community in metro Atlanta and states that Caribbean Americans are aiding to the culture and makeup of Atlanta. However, I saw his absence as a clear sign that the Caribbean community is not fully acknowledged or valued in Atlanta. It is possible that major African American political figures in Atlanta do not view Afro-Caribbean community as potential political assets because of its relatively small size (in comparison to the city’s large African American population) and of its residential dispersion across the metro area. For city politicians, Afro-Caribbeans are not big part of their potential voting pool since they have settled mostly in the suburbs rather than in the city. The event had many other leaders in attendance, including the consul of Barbados Edward Lane and State Representative Billy Mitchell, who was recognized for his work with the Caribbean community in Atlanta.

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[1] In 2012, when I tried to access the website for ACA, it was shut down.

[2] Since 2006, the White House has issued an annual proclamation, signed by the president, recognizing June as Caribbean American Heritage Month.

[3] Georgia was the third state to adopt the CAHM Resolution.

[4] Margaret informed me that they are required to work with the local libraries, based on guidelines set up by ICS.

Two Carnivals, One City

I was surprised to learn that there was more than one Caribbean carnival in Atlanta. I only found out about one carnival during a Google search and saw nothing in that search about a second carnival. I learned of the second carnival when several respondents informed me that tensions within the community led to two separate carnivals.

From what I learned from my respondents, the two carnivals occur on the same day (or during the same weekend, generally) in different parts of the metro area, with the original/older one taking place in the downtown area and the second/newer one taking place in a different location year after year (generally an area with a large Caribbean population, such as Lithonia or Stone Mountain). One of the respondents in this study, Andrew, a Trinidadian-born migrant who moved to Atlanta from New York in the 1994 and was one of the original carnival’s organizers during the 1990s, told me that the older and younger generations of migrants in the Atlanta Caribbean community divided their affiliations and the carnival too. The older generation organizes theirs in downtown Atlanta and the younger generation organizes a separate one that takes place outside of the city, in the surrounding suburbs (e.g., Stone Mountain). However, I suspect that the tensions that led to the split of the carnival are more complicated than a generational divide between the younger and older members of the Afro-Caribbean community in Atlanta.

At the core of the split of the carnivals, there seems to be an issue over who should be organizing, or which Caribbean island group should be organizing, Atlanta’s Caribbean Carnival—that is, the Trinidadians rather than the Jamaicans or the Caribbean-born rather than the American-born of Caribbean parentage have should be in control of the carnival’s organization. I learned from one of the co-founders of the original carnival, Alicia, a American-born migrant of St. Thomas-descent, that though at its inception the carnival steering committee was cross-cultural, with some whites, some African Americans, and representatives from each Caribbean group in Atlanta, eventually tensions arose concerning who should be involved in the carnival’s organization. She explained to me some of the tensions with other carnival organizers that she experienced due to her national background: “I was very involved for many years and I enjoyed it tremendously, although a lot of people felt that I should not have been involved because I am not a “Trini.” And the Trinis have a mark on carnival. I had a lot of tension and stress in that regard. A lot of them were involved but they wanted me nowhere around.” According to Alicia, she was eventually pushed her out of the carnival organization because of this issue with her background. So, I suspect over continued tensions over who should be organizing the city’s carnival likely led to the younger generation, and others who felt excluded from the carnival organization, to split from the group and create their own carnival.

Kevin, a New York-born migrant who moved to Atlanta in 1995 and whose father was a longtime leader of several Caribbean organizations in the Atlanta area, told me what he thought the two carnivals. He said:

The other carnival is in Decatur and younger people run it. They were college students when they broke off to start their own carnival. The first year their carnival was good because it was new and fresh. The next year they started getting greedy with the money and then it wasn’t good. They flip flopped but Peachtree Carnival is the official carnival and their carnival is not. 

Those who knew about the two carnivals told me that it was better when it was just one because they felt the community was too small for two. Very few mentioned the other carnival and of those who knew about it, most admitted to mainly attending the one downtown. The presence of more than one carnival has decreased the attendance for both carnivals by creating confusion on where or when they are taking place. Margaret, the leader of the Georgia Caribbean American Heritage Coalition, described how the division has had an effect on carnival attendance. She stated, “We have this major division during carnival. Last year there were three carnivals. But what happened was for two of them most people went downtown where it is supposed to be. There was one in midtown, which had a beautiful program but no people because everyone stayed downtown. The Stone Mountain group is mostly from Trinidad and had no one see their road march.”

The division has also created misinformation about the carnival and has shaped migrants’ views of the event. After my first experience at the carnival in downtown, one of my respondents, Alana, a New York-born migrant of Barbadian-descent in her mid thirties who moved to Atlanta in 1995 after college, informed me that the carnival used to be downtown but currently took place in Conyers, a city located 24 miles east of Atlanta. After I told her that there was one downtown that year, she replied, “I didn’t know there was one downtown. I have two Guyanese coworkers who went to the one in Conyers at the Horse Park and they said it was not well put together.” I was also told that the second carnival was in different places with significant Caribbean populations, including Decatur, Conyers, Lithonia, and Stone Mountain. Regardless of the knowledge about the carnivals or their locations, the consensus among the Afro-Caribbean migrants that I interviewed was that the Caribbean community in Atlanta was not big enough to have more than one carnival.

The fact that there are dueling carnivals at all shows the growing influence and presence of the Afro-Caribbean in Atlanta. Whether or not Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta attend the carnival(s), the important thing is that Atlanta has a thriving Caribbean community that can support an annual carnival. The Afro-Caribbeans in this study reported moving to Atlanta for its black population and that the existence of Caribbean community there did not play a part in their decision to move. Many of them described a Caribbean community in Atlanta as an added bonus of moving there. The existence of a sizeable Caribbean community, Caribbean events, neighborhoods, and businesses adds to the migration experience for Afro-Caribbean migrants in Atlanta and allows them to build and foster a new Caribbean community and identity that incorporates their culture and new home in the South. 

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Atlanta Caribbean Carnival Pt 2

Though the Atlanta Caribbean Carnival would be viewed is a major Caribbean cultural event Atlanta, I was surprised to discover that the majority of the Afro-Caribbeans that I spoke to had either not attended or never heard of it. Ashley, a migrant of Jamaican descent in her forties who moved to the area from Boston with her husband and kids in 2007, expressed to me a desire for Caribbean events to take her kids to so they could stay connected to their Caribbean culture. I asked her if she had taken them to the Atlanta Carnival. She replied that she didn’t know when the carnival took place but she would love to go. She promptly asked me for information about the carnival. She told me that she went to Boston Carnival a few times in years past and would love to take her kids to Atlanta’s carnival one year.

During my interviews with Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta, I found that the Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study had varying degrees of knowledge about the Caribbean community, events, and spaces in the Atlanta area. It is possible for a Caribbean person to live in Atlanta and not know about the Caribbean events occurring in the area, especially if they are not around Stone Mountain, or live in DeKalb County, which are typically where Caribbean events take place in the Atlanta area. Most of the Afro-Caribbeans that I interviewed for this study, unless they were actively involved in a Caribbean organization in the area, or a close to someone who was involved in these organizations, did not know about the local Caribbean events, including the largest Caribbean event in the Atlanta area—the Atlanta Caribbean Carnival. This was surprising, given that there were a large variety of Caribbean media in Atlanta in 2009 and 2010, while I was conducting this study, that migrants could use to find out about Caribbean events in the area.

There are a few websites where Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta are able to learn about events, such as www.atlantareggae.com and www.gacaribbeanamericanheritge.org. Most of these sites, however, appeal to younger Afro-Caribbeans or the “party” crowd advertising mostly parties, especially parties during Atlanta Caribbean Carnival weekend, and do not advertise cultural events that are likely to attract families and the older generation of Afro-Caribbeans in the area. Though the website of the Georgia Caribbean American Heritage Coalition does advertise cultural events, such as cook-offs, workshops, plays, receptions, and award ceremonies, it focuses mainly on listing the calendar of events for June’s Caribbean American Heritage Month. Events are also advertised on flyers distributed at Caribbean restaurants and shops, as discussed earlier in the chapter. But, obviously migrants have to frequent these Caribbean businesses to get the flyers and learn about the events. For the most part, since Caribbean events in Atlanta are not commonly covered in the local news or in the local newspapers, an event can come and go with little awareness that it ever had happened, unless you are actively looking for an event. I learned late into my study from two of my respondents that there were two long-running Caribbean radio programs that played Caribbean music and discussed Caribbean current events in the region and in the Atlanta area--WFRG 89.3 and Clark Atlanta University’s WLCK 91.9. But, very few of the Afro-Caribbean migrants in my study knew about the radio programs or listened to them. Again, those who knew about the Caribbean radio programs were actively involved in Atlanta Caribbean community and frequently attended and/or organized Caribbean events in the area. I found that the way most Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta found out about Caribbean events was through word of mouth.

Several factors influence how much people knew about Caribbean events and the size and success of events in the southern metropolis. The geography and sprawl of the area has created a situation where the Caribbean spaces in Atlanta are dispersed across the metro area. Those who lived in Caribbean spaces like Stone Mountain tended to be more involved and knew more about Caribbean events in the area than those Afro-Caribbeans who lived farther away. The variation in awareness of Caribbean community’s activities also appears to be linked to the time and area of in-migration to the Atlanta region. The Afro-Caribbean transplants who moved to Atlanta prior to the early 2000s tended to be those who were more socially involved and knew the most about the events, cultural groups, and businesses in the area. They got involved in cultural organizations in the community in the early 1990s, when the Caribbean population in Atlanta was small, in order to meet other Caribbean transplants and learn about local Caribbean events. For those who migrated to Atlanta in the early 2000s, their involvement in and/or connection to the Caribbean community in Atlanta is complicated by their continued ties to the Caribbean communities in the places that the moved from. This was especially for New York-origin migrants. They admitted to traveling back to New York several times a year to retrieve Caribbean products or foods and to attend events for family and friends and Caribbean cultural events, such as New York’s Carnival. I will discuss later in this chapter how this behavior has affected community development among Afro-Caribbean migrants in Atlanta.

There were a number of respondents that knew little about the Caribbean life in Atlanta and had attended very few Caribbean events in the Atlanta area. Those migrants who were not actively involved in the Caribbean community tended to do other activities to stay connected to their culture. They listened to Caribbean music, cooked Caribbean food, and traveled to their Caribbean home countries. People informed me, too, that the date of the carnival was a problem – since it was planned on Memorial Day Weekend, it was a time when many people took the three-day weekend as an opportunity to leave town.

Atlanta Caribbean Carnival

Atlanta Caribbean Carnival is the largest Caribbean events that occur in Atlanta yearly. Carnival is a vibrant expression of Caribbean culture, identity, and pride. Carnival participants or masqueraders wear costumes that range from t-shirts showcasing a group logo to elaborate costumes decorated with sequins and feathers to very large masterfully built costumes that often require wheels or harnesses to help the masquerader carry and navigate through the streets. Masqueraders dance on the streets along the carnival route to the sounds of steel pan or/and soca and calypso played by a band or a DJ—this is commonly called “playing mas.” By bringing together different Caribbean groups to celebrate a shared identity and culture, carnival plays an important role in the development of a pan-Caribbean consciousness among Afro-Caribbean immigrants (Kasinitz 1992; Hintzen 2001). As the diaspora has grown and spread out across the world, carnival has become a shared cultural identity, as well as a space for Afro-Caribbeans to publically showcase their ethnicity (Kasinitz 1992).

The Atlanta Caribbean Carnival was the earliest sign of Afro-Caribbean immigrants’ presence in Atlanta. By the time I found out about it in 2008, the carnival was celebrating its 20^th year. To my surprise my father, who regularly attended the annual Caribbean carnivals in Boston, New York, and Toronto (and who I frequently used as my personal Caribbean Wikipedia), had known about Atlanta’s carnival for years, and several of his friends regularly traveled to the Atlanta carnival as part of their yearly carnival circuit.

The first carnival took place in 1988, when the Caribbean population was relatively small (1990 Census estimated the West Indian population in Atlanta was around 8,000). At the time, Atlanta was predominantly African American and white and had not yet attracted large numbers ethnic groups and before then had not held any ethnic festivals. Atlanta Peach Caribbean Carnival, Incorporated was formed in 1987 to put on the “Atlanta Peach Caribbean Carnival—A Folklife Festival” in effort to promote Caribbean heritage, culture, and history in Atlanta. Wanting to become part of the carnival circuit that many Caribbean people (like my father) traveled to annually, the planning committee chose Memorial Weekend for the carnival as to not conflict with Caribbean carnivals in other US cities. The effort to develop the first Atlanta Caribbean Carnival was a collaborative effort among local residents (including non-Caribbean residents) and representatives from the various Caribbean groups in the area. The organizers also contacted carnival organizers in other US cities, such as New York and Miami, and asked them to send their carnival bands down to play for the Atlanta Caribbean Carnival.

In its first year, the organizers made great efforts to showcase Caribbean culture larger Atlanta community. As a precursor to Carnival, the carnival organizers put a steel pan band and a group of people in carnival costumes in the city’s annual Fourth of July Parade. They also organized cricket and soccer sports tournaments to familiarize Atlanta residents with the major sports played in the Caribbean and a Taste of Caribbean Cuisine where people could sample Caribbean fare.

When I attended the carnival for the first time in 2009, I got my first indication of the diversity of Caribbean culture and community in Atlanta. I saw flags from different countries, including St. Kitts & Nevis, Jamaica, Barbados, St. Vincent, Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, Trinidad & Tobago, US Virgin Islands, Grenada, Belize, St. Lucia, and Haiti. The Caribbean community is not monolithic. Although I refer to Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta as “the (Atlanta) Caribbean community,” “the community” is made up of different Caribbean communities, based on generation, home nations, language, class, and the places that they moved from (e.g. those who moved from New York versus those who moved from Miami). I found that some people travel to Atlanta to experience its carnival. Based on my lack of prior knowledge of it, I assumed that most of those attending the Atlanta Carnival were residents of metro Atlanta. I didn’t expect anybody, except for the invited artists, to travel to Atlanta for its carnival, like they do to Boston, Washington, D.C., Toronto, and, of course, New York for their carnivals. But, my friend Nevis and I both ran into people that we knew that traveled from cities in the Northeast to Atlanta to attend the carnival for the first time. The carnival is increasingly establishing Atlanta as center of Caribbean life in the US, similar to the way the New York Caribbean Carnival established New York City as a major cultural center for the Caribbean diaspora.

Caribbean Events in Atlanta

There is an active Caribbean nightlife in Atlanta, both within the city limits and in its outer suburbs. Almost every night of the week, somewhere, there is a Caribbean party hosted by one of the Caribbean clubs in Stone Mountain, held in one of several of the city’s night clubs, or in the reggae rooms that are designated to play reggae and other Caribbean music during their regular weekly parties. The proliferation of Caribbean parties is a clear marker of the growing presence of Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta. One migrant explained to me the impact on the city’s music and club scene: “If you go out on regular black night, you may hear 20 minutes of reggae all night. But now at First Fridays party Trendz does a Caribbean room and most clubs and parties now have a room where you can hear reggae and soca because they know we come out and spend money. This has happened in last 5 years.” During the time I was in Atlanta, from May 2009 to August 2010, about 4 Caribbean parties or reggae rooms cropped up in various clubs and lounges across the city. I attended the opening nights of the Caribbean parties at several lounges throughout the Atlanta area. These new Caribbean-themed parties were growing in popularity in the Caribbean community. Several of my Afro-Caribbean respondents, when I asked them about the Caribbean events they attended, they told me that they had also attended the new Caribbean nights at the non-Caribbean clubs in the city.

There are also many social and cultural events that cater to the Caribbean community in Atlanta, including bi-monthly mixers and networking events aimed at Caribbean professionals hosted by a networking group called A We Kinda Ting. I was told about it by one of my respondents. I tried to attend one of their events but the registration filled up quickly and I couldn’t attend. From those who attended, I heard it the event was filled with middle-aged Caribbean professionals. Caribbean food festivals have also been gaining popularity in the area. While I was in Atlanta there were two main food festivals, the Caribbean Cookout and the Jerk Festival. The festivals are growing in popularity and infusing Caribbean food into the southern metropolis that is known for its soul food.

Caribbean Businesses

Though Afro-Caribbeans make up a small percentage of the Atlanta areas residents, their presence is evident: Caribbean restaurants, bakeries, newspapers, festivals, and cricket teams can now be found throughout the metro area. Caribbean businesses play an important role, as not only forms of self-employment and entrepreneurship for Afro-Caribbean immigrants in Atlanta, but also as markers of Caribbean ethnicity. These businesses are key sites of the Caribbean immigrant experience in Atlanta. They provide services and products that help Afro-Caribbeans adapt to living in Atlanta. They also help develop and promote a Caribbean Atlanta community by providing information about Caribbean events and businesses in the area. Many of the Caribbean restaurants and shops carry magazines and flyers that promote other Caribbean events and businesses in the Atlanta area.

It is an adjustment at first for migrants especially for those who lived in cities with large established Caribbean communities, such as New York, where Afro-Caribbeans are able to get any and everything from the region. As the population grows, Caribbean goods and services are becoming more available. Local businesses are recognizing the presence of the growing Caribbean community and are reaching out to them. Kroger, one of the largest grocery chains in Atlanta (and the region), now caters to Caribbean costumers by providing Caribbean products. Over the last 10 years, Caribbean products, such as oxtail, snapper fish, or plantains, became available in the local chain supermarkets in the Atlanta area. Florence, who migrated to Atlanta in 1993, described how Caribbean food items (and other ethnic foods) have become more and more available with the influx of immigrants into the city. She stated, “When I first arrived, you had to go to a specialized market, like the DeKalb Farmer’s Market. I think as the Asian, African, and Caribbean communities demanded more food; the supermarkets expanded their selections to include more ethnic foods.” The availability of Caribbean products is important to the Caribbean immigrant experience and maintenance of a Caribbean identity in Atlanta. Sociologist Tamara Mose Brown (2011) found in her study of West Indian nannies in Brooklyn that the cooking and eating of Caribbean dishes helped them maintain ties to their Caribbean heritage and form communities among each other. Afro-Caribbeans in the study have pointed to food as one of the main ways that they stayed connected to their culture on an everyday basis since they migrated to Atlanta. Having access to Caribbean foods was especially important for the migrants. Many told me that being to able to cook and eat traditional Caribbean dishes helped make Atlanta feel more like home. Anthony, who migrated to Atlanta in 1994, explained to me why access to Caribbean products and foods were important to his life in Atlanta. He stated: “The availability of Caribbean products plays a very important role in my satisfaction with Atlanta because it was something I was used to in New York growing in a Caribbean family. In New York, I was used to Caribbean scenery and cuisine. With it being available here, it gives me great satisfaction.”

Most of the Caribbean businesses in the region are restaurants. Stone Mountain is home to many of the Caribbean restaurants in the Atlanta area. Memorial Drive’s strip has 5 or 6 Caribbean restaurants within a few miles of each other, including Kool Runnings and Royal Caribbean bakery, a popular bakery in the Atlanta area that was transplanted from New York. Several of my respondents recommended to me Tassi’s Roti Shop, which was an Indo-Trinidadian-owned restaurant on the eastside of Atlanta in Marietta, a city in Cobb County. It is one of the only Trinidadian restaurants in the Atlanta area. This reflects the growing diversity of the area, since Cobb County, like other northern counties in metro Atlanta, was formerly an all-white suburb that has recently become more diverse with the influx of immigrants and African Americans to the area (Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008b). Caribbean restaurants, like Tassa’s Roti Shop, are playing a significant part in the transformation of the area’s cultural landscape. Though the majority of the Caribbean restaurants are found in Stone Mountain and other suburban areas, there are few other restaurants in the city proper that are marking the group’s presence.[1]

Caribbean restaurants are key sites of the Caribbean experience in Atlanta. They play a major part in helping migrants adjust to their new lives in Atlanta by providing not only Caribbean products and foods, but also a space for Afro-Caribbeans to meet compatriots and learn about Caribbean events and services in the area. Typically, inside these restaurants, near the register or the entrance, there are large numbers of business cards for Caribbean-owned companies, flyers and other materials announcing local Caribbean events, and Caribbean-focused newspapers providing information about the region and the Caribbean community in Atlanta. The major Caribbean newspaper in the area is Caribbean Star. Founded in 1992, the Caribbean-focused news magazine publishes biweekly and is free for all residents of the Atlanta metro area. The Caribbean Star can be found in other cities with large Caribbean populations, including New York.

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[1] The Caribbean restaurants in the city include Calypso Café and Grill, Afrodish Restaurant, and The Original Jamaican Restaurant in the downtown area, Stir It Up in Little Five Points, and Taste of Tropical in the West End.

Caribbean Atlanta Neighborhoods

Afro-Caribbean migrants have marked their presence in Atlanta by creating Caribbean spaces across the metropolitan area. Unlike their counterparts in New York and Miami, Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta are forming ethnic cultural spaces in the suburbs rather than in the heart of the city. This fits with the residential patterns of Afro-Caribbeans in this study (as discussed in Chapter Two). The majority of Afro-Caribbean migrants in Atlanta have settled outside the city limits, with the largest concentration in suburban areas east of the city. The settlement of Afro-Caribbeans in the suburbs follows a recent shift in immigrant settlement patterns in the US from major cities to suburbs (Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008b). David, a sixty-year-old Jamaican man who migrated from New York in 1989, explained to me how the Caribbean community has spread out across the Atlanta metro area since the migration began.

“The Caribbean community, 20 or 25 years ago, in the 1990s was centered in DeKalb County, which includes the towns of Stone Mountain and Lithonia. It has now spread out to points north. I work in Kennesaw and there is a vibrant Caribbean community there. There are Caribbean people in Roswell and even further up than that, well into the suburbs. It has gone south Stockbridge. You find a lot of folks living down there. Of course, it goes all the way down to Conyers and Douglasville. The Caribbean community is very spread out now.”

            One of the first and most significant Caribbean spaces to form in the Atlanta area is in the small city of Stone Mountain located east of Atlanta city limits in DeKalb County. Stone Mountain is, according to the Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study, the place where you can find Caribbean people, food, clubs, and businesses in Atlanta. In 2010, the city’s population was 5,802, with blacks making up 69 percent of the residents. West Indian was the second largest ethnic group. West Indians made up 4 percent of the city’s population and are the second largest ethnicity behind English, making up 5 percent of the population, according to the 2010 American Community Survey estimates. For many Afro-Caribbean transplants, Stone Mountain is the heart of Caribbean Atlanta; its plethora of businesses and high concentration of Caribbean residents evoke images of Crown Heights and Flatbush in Brooklyn, two well-known, large Caribbean commercial and residential areas of the New York City borough. Memorial Drive, one of the main streets, is a commercial street filled with Caribbean businesses, including a mall of clubs that are bustling during the weekends, especially during holiday weekends, and carnival weekend.

            The small city was named for the nearby mountain. Located inside Stone Mountain State Park, the mountain has a giant memorial of three Confederate military leaders carved into its side. Stone Mountain was the local home of the Ku Klux Klan, which was revived there after dying out in the 1870s (Wade 1998). This history marks a stark contradiction to what the area has become of late—a black suburb with a growing Caribbean enclave. Very few of the Afro-Caribbean migrants that I interviewed knew about the anti-black history of Stone Mountain. Whenever I asked about Stone Mountain, my respondents only mentioned its Caribbean community. They never mentioned its dark history of racial violence. Their settlement in Stone Mountain is similar to their settlement in New York City, where they have carved out distinct Caribbean enclaves within larger black neighborhoods, except in this case, Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta are forming residential niches in the black suburbs rather than the black inner city neighborhoods (Tedrow and Crowder 2001). This “pioneer” type of settlement into an area that was previously hostile, and potentially dangerous for blacks, is not surprising, given that research on Caribbean immigrants in New York has shown that they were among the first black people to move into once white areas in the city and helped to racially mix neighborhoods such as Canarsie and Crown Heights (Lobo and Salvo 2000; Crowder and Tedrow 2001; Bashi 2007). By moving to Stone Mountain and forming neighborhoods there, Caribbean immigrants establish themselves as a distinct ethnic community, and still maintain a connection to the larger black community in Atlanta.  

As a distinctly Caribbean neighborhood, Stone Mountain provides Afro-Caribbean migrants in Atlanta a comfortable space where they can connect to their compatriots, purchase Caribbean foods and products, participate in Caribbean cultural organizations, and attend Caribbean clubs. Most Afro-Caribbeans interviewed for this study reported that the presence of Caribbean compatriots, events, and products played a major part in their satisfaction with their new lives in Atlanta. As discussed in the preceding chapters, Afro-Caribbeans were greatly attracted to Atlanta by its image as a black mecca. The presence of a vibrant Caribbean community was seen by many of the migrants as an added bonus to living in Atlanta. Dwight, a Kittian migrant in his mid-thirties who migrated from New York to Atlanta in 2007, explained to me how the existence of Caribbean neighborhoods in Atlanta greatly helped him and his family adapt to their new lives in the southern city. He stated:

The fact that there is a Caribbean community and I can go get some Caribbean food and I can experience some Caribbean music and some Caribbean festivity, that’s definitely good. You know, we like to eat Caribbean food. And, we can cook it but you don’t always feel like cooking. And, it’s good to be able to experience your people and your culture and your music. I’m glad that exists because it definitely makes living here a little easier. I don’t feel like I left that behind. I feel like I can get that here. There are some things I feel that we left behind in New York that we haven’t gotten here, but that’s not one of them.

Although almost all of the Afro-Caribbeans in this study identified Stone Mountain as a Caribbean neighborhood, and the center of the community in Atlanta, I found that only two of my respondents lived there at the time that I interviewed them. Several migrants did live there during their time living in Atlanta, usually staying with a relative soon after they migrated to the area, but they moved to other suburbs that, according to them, had better housing and schools. The small number of migrants to have lived in Stone Mountain is not surprising, since, as I discussed in the preceding chapters, many of the Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study had no networks and/or decided to move to Atlanta even though they had no ties there. The most common reason that respondents gave for not living in Stone Mountain was that they wanted to live in an ethnically diverse neighborhood. Despite spending a lot of time there socially, Kerry, a thirty-nine year old woman of Trinidadian descent who moved to Atlanta from New York in 1994, explained to me that she chose to live in Cobb County instead of Stone Mountain because of the ethnic diversity that living in the county offered her. She said: “When I think of a true melting pot in a county, I find that more in Cobb. In Stone Mountain, not so much. Lithonia, not so much. I think that those areas are heavily populated by one group—us. I don’t see Indians, Caucasians, or Chinese. In Cobb, I see everything.” Like Kerry, other Afro-Caribbean migrants told me that they preferred to live in a diverse area, rather than one dominated by only one group. Research has shown that DeKalb County—the county where Stone Mountain is located—is the most diverse county in the Atlanta metropolitan area and that Cobb County is becoming increasingly diverse as immigrants and African Americans, attracted by their housing and job opportunities, settle there (Hansen 2005; Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008b). I found that the Afro-Caribbeans that I interviewed for this study were especially not interested in living predominantly black or Caribbean neighborhoods. Though they reported being attracted to Atlanta because it was a black city, this did not necessarily mean that they moved so they could live in black only areas. This was especially important to Afro-Caribbeans who migrated to the area from New York. Even if they lived in the Caribbean neighborhoods in New York, they were used to living and working in a diverse environment and wanted to have a similar experience in Atlanta.

The Caribbean spaces that have formed in the suburban areas of Atlanta such as Stone Mountain are important for immigrant newcomers to cushion the resettlement process. These spaces help Afro-Caribbean immigrants to feel more at home. It is a place where all Afro-Caribbeans, not only recent migrants, can live among Caribbean compatriots, find Caribbean food and products, develop social networks, and showcase their culture and their presence as a distinct black ethnic community in Atlanta.

Caribbean Atlanta

Around 4 p.m. on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend in 2009—three days after I moved to Atlanta to begin this study—my friend Nevis picked me up from my apartment and we made our way downtown to attend the Atlanta Caribbean Carnival. I had planned my move to the city to coincide with the Carnival so that I would be able to experience this important Caribbean cultural event and get a glimpse of Caribbean life in Atlanta. When Nevis and I arrived downtown, it looked deserted. In New York, as soon as you get within a few blocks of Eastern Parkway, where its Caribbean Carnival takes place annually on Labor Day, you are inundated with images, sounds, and smells that let you know that you are at or approaching the Carnival. But, as we drove along the streets of downtown Atlanta, I didn’t see any signs that the Atlanta Caribbean Carnival was occurring there—no music, masqueraders, banners, large crowds of people walking around, traffic, or lines of police officers and barricades on the street marking the location of the Carnival. According to its website, the Atlanta Caribbean Carnival included a parade of bands (from 12pm to 2pm) that moved along West Peachtree Street and a Festival Village (from 10am to 10pm), located on historic Auburn Avenue in the Carnival Village, which would have food, vendors, and musical performances by a number of popular Caribbean soca and calypso artists.

I imagined the streets would be filled with people dancing and waving the national flags of their respective Caribbean home countries and the sounds of soca, calypso, reggae, and various other Caribbean music, pouring from the large speakers tied tightly to carnival trucks as they slowly rolled down the streets or from the speakers of cars parked along the streets as Carnival attendees tried to create their own carnival experience. But, after driving along West Peachtree Street and Jesse Hill Jr. Drive for ten minutes looking for cheap parking, I saw no signs of the Carnival. Despite this, we parked and made our way towards the Carnival Village. Slowly, we spotted small groups of people walking in the direction of the street. Looking closely at the people, I saw that some were holding Caribbean flags or wearing clothing with a Caribbean country’s name or flag on it. About a block away from Auburn Avenue, I saw the first major sign that an event was happening: police officers and barricades. A few steps later, vendor stands and crowds of people became visible. Caribbean music began to fill the air. On each side of the street, there were crowds of people standing around vendor stands selling Caribbean CDs, DVDs, clothing, and crafts. After several feet, the vendor stands turned into food stands, which were located under a highway overpass. As we walked past the stands towards the other side of the Carnival Village, the smell of different island foods filled the air. Many of the stands offered similar Caribbean dishes. On the other side of the overpass, there was a stage in the middle of a circular area. Scattered around the stage, there was a few more food stands and a large crowd of people. A band was performing a calypso song on the stage, while thousands of people were dancing to music and waving flags from various Caribbean islands. The smell of the Caribbean dishes, such as curry goat, jerk chicken, and oxtail stew, wafted through the air from the many food stands, enticing those walking by to stop and eat. The Carnival Village was filled with vibrant expressions of Caribbean culture, identity, and pride. As Nevis and I weaved through the crowd towards the stage, I felt a strong connection to my Caribbean culture and to the thousands of other Caribbean people at the Carnival.

The Atlanta Caribbean Carnival is one of many ways that Afro-Caribbeans have marked their growing presence in the region. Since their arrival in the city, Afro-Caribbeans have put a distinctive stamp on Atlanta and its surrounding suburbs. In this chapter, I explore how Afro-Caribbeans are using cultural practices and institution building to create community among each other and to claim spaces in Atlanta that foster and reinforce a distinct Caribbean identity and culture—“Caribbean Atlanta.” The community supports Caribbean newspapers, radio programs, festivals and parades, and numerous cultural and social organizations and clubs, including country-specific associations, a theater group, cricket teams, and a networking organization. Through their businesses, neighborhoods, organizations, and events, Afro-Caribbean immigrants are transforming the physical and cultural landscapes of the Atlanta metro area, as well as helping members of the Caribbean Atlanta community, especially recent migrants, adapt to their new life. They are also creating transnational and “translocal” (extending or operating across regional boundaries) linkages between Atlanta and other major cities. Many Afro-Caribbeans maintain strong ties to their former communities (i.e., the cities, towns, and countries that they migrated from) through frequent travel and social networks. These ties are especially important for Afro-Caribbeans’ community-building efforts in Atlanta. They allow Afro-Caribbean migrants to get services, support, and goods that they need to feel more at more and to create and sustain a Caribbean identity in their new home.