My doctoral dissertation project, titled, Richard Hilton Tobitt's Diaspora: Religion, Migration, and Grassroots Organizing, 1865-1945, is an early twentieth-century political narrative of Black activism in the eastern Caribbean and New York City. The main argument of my dissertation is that through the lens of Antiguan-born Reverend Richard Hilton Tobitt (1873-1961), we learn about the monumental impact of Leeward Islander migration on Black political organizing in the understudied areas of Bermuda and Staten Island, New York. Using the early twentieth-century experiences of Tobitt as a window into much larger phenomenon, my project brings attention to Black political organizing in Bermuda, the roots of Caribbean nationalism, and highlights the understudied Black community in Staten Island.
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