the beginning

On May 20, 2009, after months of planning, gathering funds, making housing arrangements, and packing as many clothes, books, and personal items as possible into three suitcases, I stepped off a plane at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and embarked on a journey to study the new migration of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to Atlanta, Georgia. Although my move “down South” was greatly motivated by my research project, I also moved for personal reasons. After living in New York City, for eight years (four years each for college and graduate school), it had become emotionally, spiritually, and financially draining. I was ready to leave the city and experience something different.

I loved Atlanta, since my first visit in 2003: its mansion-style homes and gated communities that looked like they belonged on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous;” the delicious southern cuisine that caused me to lick my fingers after eating; the bass-thumping music rhythms that called me to bounce my head, stomp my feet, and shake my booty; and the many black faces I saw in and around the city that made me feel like I belonged there. Atlanta was one of my favorite places to visit. Yet, when it came time for me to leave my brownstone apartment in Brooklyn and move to Atlanta, I wasn’t sure what I would find. Three of my friends of Caribbean-descent had moved to Atlanta from New York and Boston in the first 10 years of the 2000s; when my friends moved I had no idea they were part of a movement of Afro-Caribbean people relocating to Atlanta en masse.” I later learned that my father had friends who preceded mine in moving to Atlanta in the 1990s.

Before embarking on my dissertation research, even on visits to Atlanta I failed to see anything that indicated to me that there was a rapidly growing Afro-Caribbean community in Atlanta. I saw no Caribbean restaurants or businesses, no flyers announcing fetes or juves or other dance parties, nor the flags of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Grenada, or any other island nation—these things had clearly marked the Caribbean communities and spaces that I knew intimately in New York and Boston. I had regularly heard the complaints made by one of my Atlanta-based Afro-Caribbean friends; she had lived in the city between 2005 and 2008 and regularly complained about her inability to find Caribbean foods, events, and people in the area. All these things assured me that I was right to assume that Atlanta had little Afro-Caribbean community to speak of, and certainly there could not have been one large enough to point to Atlanta as a major Afro-Caribbean destination.

But in 2008, I taught a course I titled “West Indians in America,” and while preparing the syllabus I read the works of several scholars who mentioned that Afro-Caribbeans had begun to move to Atlanta (Green and Wilson 1992; Logan 2007; Vickerman 1999). My surprise at learning this led me to read everything that I could find that referenced “Afro-Caribbeans” and “Atlanta.” I looked at data from the US Census Bureau, conducted Internet searches, and spoke with as many informed people as I could (whether they academic scholars or experienced family members or friends. I found that the Afro-Caribbean population in Atlanta grew 323.3 percent between 1990 and 2000—making Atlanta the decade’s fastest growing Caribbean destination. I wondered how this happened. What was drawing Afro-Caribbeans to Atlanta? From where were they migrating? Were they moving to Atlanta from other US cities, as my friends had, or, were they emigrating directly from their Caribbean islands of origin to the southern city? Where were they settling in the Atlanta area? Were they developing distinct Caribbean neighborhoods like those in New York, or intermingling with American-born black people? And why did they choose Atlanta? Did Atlanta offer to Afro-Caribbeans something that other cities did not have? How are Afro-Caribbeans, as black immigrants, being received in Atlanta? As I asked myself more and more questions, I knew that I had to find the answers.