“Women Were Always There…”: Caribbean Immigrant Women, Mutual Aid Societies, and Benevolent Associations in the Early Twentieth Century

Departing from traditional male-centered immigrant narratives, this chapter provides a nuanced and complex understanding of Anglophone Caribbean immigration to the United States by placing women in the center of diasporic formation as indispensable agents in forging transnational communities. In the early twentieth century, Caribbean women initiated female-led chains of immigration. Ultimately, laying the social and economic foundation for later immigrants and helping to establish a thriving Caribbean community in the United States. Subsequently, this chapter posits that female immigrants served as the guardians and proponents of Caribbean culture in the United States. They also played an imperative role in immigrant mutual aid societies and benevolent associations which further aided in the creation of formal and informal networks. These associations empowered immigrant women and served as training grounds for female leaders, giving them a platform in which to discuss issues of social and political reform. Examining immigrant women’s roles in social organizations provides an important voice to an often-neglected aspect of the Caribbean immigrant experience and highlights the inextricable links between notions of gender, race, and class in shaping complex and diverse immigrant narratives.