For a taste of the Caribbean just go to Brooklyn

Written By Melissa Noel

A crowd cheers at the unveiling of Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard in Brooklyn, New York, on August 18, 2018. The Haitian revolutionary leader is one of many notable Caribbeans honored in street names and murals throughout the Little Caribbean neighborhood.

PHOTOGRAPH BY IDRIS TALIB SOLOMON, THE NEW YORK TIMES / REDUX

For more than half a century, the Crown Heights, Canarsie, and Flatbush areas have been a cultural touchstone for Caribbeans in America. Locals want to keep it that way. Outside Labay Market, with its awning decked in the red, gold, and green colors of Grenada’s flag, people line up to get fresh coconut water and soursop. The scent of jerk chicken grilling in oil drums fills the air, while Caribbean accents mix with reggae, konpa, and soca music in a pulsating soundtrack.

It sure feels like the islands, but the market is in Brooklyn, New York, in a vibrant neighborhood known as Little Caribbean.

For more than half a century this corner of the city has been a major Caribbean cultural and commercial hub in America. But while it’s home to the largest and most diverse community of people of Caribbean ancestry outside the West Indies, it wasn’t officially designated as the world’s first (and only Little Caribbean) until 2017.

Now residents are seeking national historic status for the neighborhood—a vital cultural connection that was hit hard during the pandemic and is increasingly being threatened by development. “This area is like a one-stop shop for all things Caribbean,” says McDonald “Big Mac” Romain, owner of Labay Market, which sells island favorites from cassava to callaloo, sea moss to spices—much of it imported from Romain’s 60-acre family farm in Grenada.

Little Caribbean’s deep roots

Located off Florida’s southern coast, the Caribbean consists of nearly 30 countries including Grenada, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago.

In the early half of the 20th century, the first wave of large-scale voluntary migration from the Caribbean to the United States began. These mostly Afro-Caribbean immigrants from English-speaking countries in the region, such as Jamaica and Barbados, sought greater economic stability and found work in America mainly as laborers.

(Here’s how Ellis Island shepherded millions of immigrants into the U.S.)

New York City was the most significant point of entry. By the 1940s, Caribbean immigrants filled labor shortages that rose during World War II and continued into the postwar period.

In subsequent decades, New York City’s West Indian community grew to new levels, partly due to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Also known as The Hart-Celler Act, it repealed over 40 years of restrictive and discriminatory immigration policies that favored people from western Europe, while curtailing immigration from other countries. The act lifted national-origin country quotas and replaced them with a system based on family reunification and employment.

Over the ensuing years, most Caribbean immigrants in New York City settled in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, Canarsie, and Flatbush neighborhoods, where they worked in high-demand sectors, such as healthcare, education, and domestic care. In the process, they stitched together networks and communities with a distinct Caribbean flavor.