Visitors are spoiled for choice when it comes to ethnic communities in New York. There are several Chinatowns, two Little Italys, Koreatown and Little India, among several others.
However, did you know that as of 2017 there has been a Little Caribbean?
The brainchild of Shelley Worrell, a first-generation Caribbean-American born to Trinidadian parents, Little Caribbean is a community in Flatbush and along the corridors of Flatbush, Church, Nostrand and Utica Avenues.
The community is home to a number of businesses owned by Caribbean people – bakeries, beauty salons, boutiques, barbershops and ice cream parlors among many other shops. Streets are named after Caribbean icons: Bob Marley of Jamaica, Toussaint L’ouverture of Haiti and Lamuel A Stanisclaus of Grenada, founder of the West Indian Day Parade.
“I worked in technology at Google. When you work here in New York, you spend a lot of time commuting back and forth to work. You spend a lot of time outside of your current neighborhood, and on the weekends you’re doing laundry and running errands, so you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in your community,” Worrell said, recalling the origins of the designation.
“My dad got really sick and there was no work-life balance for me at Google, so I quit my job, shaved my head and started spending more time in Flatbush. I realized that this was the epicenter of the Caribbean community. Vincentians, Haitians, Belizeans, Antiguans, Trinidadians, they’re all here.”
Worrell began working with some of the local elected officials for New York through her organization I Am caribBEING. She said during one of the meetings with an elected official who is Grenadian American, she asked him why there wasn’t a Little Caribbean and he said he would like to help make that happen.
Determined and on a mission, Worrell, who majored in hospitality and tourism, determined the area by considering proximity to transportation, local attractions like Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and concentration of businesses.
“I made a map and the mayor’s office sent a recommendation advising that I AM CARIBBEAN and local businesses should develop Little Caribbean. It is the first and only one in the world and we are seen as a model for community development. There are city agencies, institutions and corporations that come to us for advice,” she said.
Map of the Little Caribbean
Today, Little Caribbean is officially on Google maps and recognized by ride-sharing apps Lyft and Uber.
“It has become a destination. Lifestyle influencers have dubbed it an urban cultural hotspot. Some people come here to soak up the culture and many for the food. This is a diverse black community,” Worrell said of the response to the community.
Caribbean people began migrating to the US after the abolition of slavery and during World War I with most of them settling in New York. In the 1940s, after the 1924 immigration policy, which sought to limit the number of non-whites entering the US, was eased to address labor shortages caused by World War II, 50,000 Caribbean people went to USA.
After President Lyndon Johnson signed the Hart-Celler Act (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965), reversing over 50 years of discriminatory immigration policies, large numbers of Caribbean people poured into the US settling in various communities of Brooklyn – Flatbush, East Flatbush and Crown Heights.
Today, however, with gentrification and economic challenges driving many families to places like Atlanta and South Carolina, preserving Caribbean culture, presence and history are even more urgent.
“Gentrification is one of the things that’s very important to me, personally and professionally as someone who was born here and still lives here, it’s very important to remember the contribution of the Caribbean to New York because we could be hidden so easily,” Worrell said. .
“Some people are moving, people are losing their homes, so the numbers are definitely changing, and the black population including the Afro-Caribbean numbers in Brooklyn have dropped in the last census. It was important for me to advocate for the Little Caribbean. If this neighborhood becomes something else, you might as well rewind the tape and say this neighborhood was a Caribbean community.
Shelley Worrell
During Caribbean-American Heritage Month, visitors can participate in a variety of activities in Little Caribbean. There are tours; you can go island hopping to different restaurants to try cuisine from different islands and concerts.
This month there will be events in Prospect Park, and Dumbo House including a concert with Angela Hunte.
Little Caribbean has also joined the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to create a Caribbean culinary garden so visitors can get recipes and recommendations for places to enjoy some herbs from businesses in the district. Worrell created the recipes with her aunt Cheryl Samaroo who lives in Trinidad.
Little Caribbean is perhaps the most visible manifestation of Worrell’s mission to create a space for Caribbean culture in the US.
It started with an idea for IAM CaribBEING, a name she came up with while in college doing a joint major in Anthropology and Caribbean Studies.
“At that point in my life, I started spending more time in the Caribbean, attending conferences and doing research. I was part of an archeological dig in Antigua. We were digging a plantation there; a friend of mine and I were responsible for the ethnography of the people who worked on the plantations. I began to explore my Caribbean identity and saw the lack of representation of Caribbean history.”
In 2010, she and her friend, Chantel Bell, a Jamaican-American, WHO ran a local non-profit organization in Flatbush, set out to hold the first film festival dedicated to Caribbean films.
The venture failed as there was barely any interest from the public. However, the earthquake in Haiti happened and CaribBEING co-founder Janluk Stanislas, who directed a film, Hands can wash others [United We Stand], felt it was important to show the film in Flatbush where a large Haitian community resides.
Art, music and food were involved, 300 people showed up and CaribBEING was established as a platform for Caribbean creativity and lifestyle.
For more information on Little Caribbean visit: https://www.littlecaribbean.
