Subject Note: In 2019, the City of Norwich produced a Cape Verdean Festival to celebrate this community important to the city's heritage. This was one of several ethnic festivals organized by the City for the first time. Subject Note: Connecticut has the third largest Cape Verdean population in the United States (after California and Massachusetts), with active and growing communities in Bridgeport, Waterbury, and Norwich. Starting in 1996, the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program of the Institute for Community Research (now at the Connecticut Historical Society) participated in a statewide public history project with one of the state's most interesting but little known ethnic groups. The Cape Verdean presence in New England dates to the 18th century, and new immigrants from Cape Verde continue to arrive. However libraries, even in cities with a sizeable Cape Verdean presence, hold little information about the history and culture of this group generally, and virtually nothing about Connecticut's estimated 5,000 Cape Verdeans. Yet the cultural traditions of Cape Verdean-Americans remain strong, deeply felt, and regularly practiced. From their early presence as whalers on New England schooners to the burgeoning popularity of their distinctive music both globally and locally, Cape Verdeans have contributed much to the character, the labor force, and the culture of southern New England. Cape Verdean traditional culture inevitably changed with the mass migration of people from the islands to America. Transplanted practices have themselves evolved in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as the second and third generations are born and grow up in a vastly different society. Many in Cape Verdean communities in Connecticut adhere to traditions which although altered in some ways, maintain both the flavor and meaning of their origins. The constant influx of new Cape Verdeans from the islands freshens familiarity with older customs while bringing forward cultural expressions which before 1975 were forbidden under Portuguese colonial rule. Many Connecticut Cape Verdeans and community organizations remain actively involved in sustaining heritage through regular educational and cultural activities. Wherever they settled, Cape Verdeans formed clubs and associations, a direct maintenance of the island tradition of tabanka. These mutual aid societies in Cape Verde provided essential assistance and services for local inhabitants suffering from constant drought, poverty and colonial neglect. In America early immigrants from the town of Praia on the island of Santiago organized the Holy Name Society in Boston. Men from this group traveled all over New England, especially during the Depression, to distribute clothes, food, or services. Antonia Sequeira remembers them helping her father to dig and plant a garden behind the family's house in Stratford. In the late 1930s and 1940s communities established Cape Verdean social clubs which still flourish, a direct continuation of the tabanka tradition. The concept of assistance for those in need continues in the regular Cape Verdean practice of sending oil drums packed with clothes and other American goods to families in the islands, especially during the frequent drought-related famines. Subject Note for Norwich Community: The Cape Verdean Santiago Society, a Norwich-based social and cultural organization incorporated in 1939, was housed in a building on Talman Street in the heart of the Norwich Cape Verdean community. Norwich today is home to more than 1,500 Cape Verdeans, descendants of immigrants from the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa as well as newcomers from the islands. The population continues to grow as Cape Verdean-Americans save money to bring their families from the islands in order to provide a prosperous life for them in this country. Many of the new arrivals speak the language Krioulu, a blend of African and Portuguese dialects. Norwich Academy has several Cape Verdean students attending. Retired whalers from the islands of Fogo, Brava, and Sao Nicolau settled in Norwich in the early years of the 20th century. Around 1918, Cape Verdeans were brought to this coastal city by rail companies for industrial work such as unloading coal from barges and shoveling coal into the boilers of steamships. At this time many lived in railroad cars in the Allyn’s Point area. The main Cape Verdean neighborhood in Norwich developed on the hilly east side, along Talman Street, anchored by the social club. The close-knit community maintained traditional ties of kinship and reciprocity. The Santiago Society long served as a focal point for the community, offering social and economic assistance. Named after the island of Santiago, whose city Praia is the capital of Cape Verde, the Norwich Society developed out of the local branch of a mutual aid association in Providence. In 1939, the Santiago Society built the social club on Talman Street and organized activities every weekend. It provided a place of contact where new arrivals could mix with other Cape Verdeans, giving them a sense of belonging to a community and helping to ease their homesickness. Members would engage in the traditional games of bisca and ouril and share stories. A deeply religious group, Cape Verdeans often held traditional wakes at the Club. Women and men would chant the choroguiza, crying and talking about the deceased in communal mourning. Afterwards members distributed food to the bereaved family. Generations of Norwich Cape Verdeans made the Club the heart of their community, but unfortunately the Club burned down in 2006 and has disbanded. Cape Verdeans everywhere have a gift for music, and in Norwich there have been two popular bands playing Cape Verdean and American styles of music: the Santos Band and the DelGado band. Descendants of these families still live in the area today. Several Cape Verdean leaders have visited Norwich: General Consul Maria de Jesus and Cape Verde Ambassador Jose Brito attended a celebration of the reconstruction of St. Anthony's Chapel held at the American Legion in Norwich on 30 October 2005. Cape Verde Prime Minister Jose Maria Neves and his delegation visited Norwich in 2007; a special reception in his honor was held by the community. As an outgrowth of the work of the 1998 community history project, The Cape Verdean Santiago Society Inc., a Norwich-based social and cultural organization incorporated in 1939, developed a project in 2003 to research, document, and make accessible the rich history of Cape Verdeans who have settled in the Norwich area since the early 19th century and who continue to be an important part of the community today. For many members of ethnic communities, their traditions have deep roots in history and culture, and are an important source of cultural identity and knowledge. Santiago Society Board member and project team co-director Alfred H. Gonsalves states, “If our history is not documented, it will be lost forever. One of our main project activities will be to interview older Cape Verdeans who have a wonderful store of memories and knowledge, so that we can gather this information and pass it on to our young people.” The history project was conducted by a team of area Cape Verdeans with a great interest in their community’s heritage, Norwich Historical Society Inc. and young adults from the Cape Verdean community. The team examined land records, newspaper archives, census data, museum collections, oral histories, and the archives of the Cape Verdean Santiago Society to find information on Cape Verdeans in eastern Connecticut. Topics explored included migration and settlement patterns, neighborhood demographics, traditional practices, and cultural events and activities. After completing the research, the Cape Verdean Santiago Society planned to publish an illustrated booklet presenting the community’s history to the public. The booklet would be distributed to schools, area historical societies, public and college libraries, and be widely available to the public free of charge, because this kind of research on a key Norwich community had not been compiled in depth before. Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for this community and this event Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.