Federal Writer's Project Interview, Case #7, with a Male Immigrant from Santiago, Cuba, 1939
Suggested Teaching Instructions
In the 1920s and 1930s, a small but significant Cuban community — both white and black — resided in the New York area. Entertainers, artists, political exiles, and businessmen, as well as workers looking for a better life, settled in neighborhoods in Chelsea, East Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen, Park Avenue, Brooklyn, and northern New Jersey. Nearly 26,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States between 1921 and 1940. Over 1 million Cubans immigrated to the United States between 1959 and 1995. (Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service)
This interview is part of the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Writers’ Project of the 1930s. It is part of the Spanish Book that emphasizes Hispanics in New York.
How does migration affect the migrant and the community into which they migrate?