The city of Baltimore, Maryland includes a large and growing Caribbean-American population. The Caribbean-American community is centered in West Baltimore. The largest non-Hispanic Caribbean populations in Baltimore are Jamaicans, Trinidadians and Tobagonians, and Haitians. Baltimore also has significant Hispanic populations from the Spanish West Indies, particularly Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans. Northwest Baltimore is the center of the West Indian population of Baltimore, while Caribbean Hispanics in the city tend to live among other Latinos in neighborhoods such as Greektown, Upper Fell's Point, and Highlandtown. Jamaicans and Trinidadians are the first and second largest West Indian groups in the city, respectively. [1] The neighborhoods of Park Heights and Pimlico in northwest Baltimore are home to large West Indian populations, particularly Jamaican-Americans.
In the 1960 United States Census, Baltimore was home to 429 Puerto Ricans. [2]
There were 17,141 West Indian Americans in the Baltimore metropolitan area in 2000. This count excludes Caribbean people from Hispanic countries, such as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, however, if included the Caribbean population would be about 23,000. [3] In the same year Baltimore's West Indian population was 6,597, 1% of the city's population. [4]
In 2000, Jamaicans were the largest West Indian group in Baltimore making up 1% of the city's population. [5]
In 2010, Puerto Ricans were 0.6% of Baltimore's population with 3,137 people. 0.2% were Dominican at 1,111 people, while 0.1% were Cuban at 824 people.
In 1994, there were 30,000 West Indians in the Greater Baltimore area. [6]
In September 2014, immigrants from the West Indies, other than Jamaicans, Trinidadians and Tobagonians, and Haitians, were the sixty-eighth largest foreign-born population in Baltimore. Jamaican immigrants were the second largest foreign-born population in Baltimore, after Mexicans. Trinidadian and Tobagonian immigrants were the third largest, Guyanese immigrants were the twenty-first largest and Haitian immigrants were the thirty-seventh largest. [7]
Caribbean immigrants have lived in Baltimore since colonial times. During the time of the French Revolution, there was a slave revolt on the French colony of Saint-Domingue, in what is now Haiti. Many French-speaking Black Catholic and white French Catholic refugees from San Domingo left for Baltimore. In total, 1,500 Franco-Haitians fled the island. [8] The Haitian refugee population was multiracial and included white French-Haitians and their Afro-Haitian slaves, as well as many free people of color, some of whom were also slaveowners. [9] Along with the Sulpician Fathers, these refugees founded St. Francis Xavier Church. The church is the oldest historically Black Catholic church in the United States. [10] During the Haitian Revolution, Baltimore passed an ordinance declaring that all slaves imported from the West Indies, including Haiti, were "dangerous to the peace and welfare of the city" and ordered slave-owners to banish them. [11]
The first Caribbean Hispanics began to arrive in Baltimore during the 1960s. Beginning in the 1960s, middle-class anti-Castro professionals began immigrating to Baltimore from Cuba. They were soon followed by middle-class immigrants from Puerto Rico. [12] 1980 saw a second wave of Cuban immigration. Most were outcasts from Cuba, mainly poor and uneducated and many being former prisoners. [12]
Many Jamaicans have settled in the Park Heights neighborhood. The northern portion of the neighborhood is predominantly white and Jewish and the lower portion is predominantly African-American. The Jamaicans, the majority of whom are Black, have mostly settled in the lower portion of the neighborhood with other people of African descent. [13]
Caribbean Hispanics in Baltimore, particularly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, some of whom come from other states like New York and New Jersey, are mostly concentrated in outer Southeast neighborhoods east of Haven Street towards southeastern Baltimore County, including Greektown and Joseph Lee.
An annual Baltimore Caribbean Carnival Festival is held in Druid Hill Park. The festival attracts around 20–25,000 people and includes food, music, and a parade. [14] [15] The event has been held since 1981 when it was formed by the West Indian Association of Maryland, an organization for people of West Indian or Guyanese descent. [16]
By proclamation of Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, September 10–12 have been designated as "West Indian/Caribbean Days". [16]
Trinidadian-Americans have established the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Baltimore and multiple Trinidadian businesses, including barbershops, groceries, and specialty stores. A newspaper called Caribbean Focus exists which caters to the community. Every year a festival is held to celebrate the culture of Trinidad and Tobago. [1]
The Baltimore-based Komite Ayiti (Haitian Creole for “Haiti Committee”) is a Haitian-American organization with around 200 members in Maryland. Komite Ayiti hosts monthly get-togethers where members can learn to speak Haitian Creole and can express their Haitian culture, including Haitian dance and cuisine. The committee was opposed to and joined in demonstrations against the Trump administration's decision to cancel temporary protected status for nearly 60,000 Haitians living in the United States. [17] The committee also celebrates an annual Haitian Independence Day event where traditional dishes such as soup joumou are served. [18]
The Greater Antilles is a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Navassa Island and the Cayman Islands. Six island states share the region of the Greater Antilles, with Haiti and the Dominican Republic sharing the island of Hispaniola. Together with the Lesser Antilles, they make up the Antilles.
Afro–Latin Americans or Black Latin Americans are Latin Americans of full or mainly sub-Saharan African ancestry.
The cuisine of New York City comprises many cuisines belonging to various ethnic groups that have entered the United States through the city. Almost all ethnic cuisines are well represented in New York, both within and outside the various ethnic neighborhoods.
North American Cuisine includes foods native to or popular in countries of North America, such as Canadian cuisine, American cuisine, African American cuisine, Mexican cuisine, Caribbean cuisine and Central American cuisine. North American cuisines display influence from many international cuisines, including Native American cuisine, Jewish cuisine, African cuisine, Asian cuisine, and especially European cuisine.
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries to work primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Other names for the ethnic group include Black Caribbean, Afro or Black West Indian or Afro or Black Antillean. The term Afro-Caribbean was not coined by Caribbean people themselves but was first used by European Americans in the late 1960s.
Lists of Americans are lists of people from the United States. They are grouped by various criteria, including ethnicity, religion, state, city, occupation and educational affiliation.
At the 2010 census, there were 1,526,006 people, 590,071 households, and 352,272 families residing in the consolidated city-county of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The population density was 4,337.3/km2 (11,233.6/mi2). There were 661,958 housing units at an average density of 1,891.9/km2 (4,900.1/mi2).
The Spanish West Indies or the Spanish Antilles were Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. In terms of governance of the Spanish Empire, The Indies was the designation for all its overseas territories and was overseen by the Council of the Indies, founded in 1524 and based in Spain. When the Crown established the Viceroyalty of New Spain in 1535, the islands of the Caribbean came under its jurisdiction.
Caribbean Americans or West Indian Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the Caribbean. Caribbean Americans are a multi-ethnic and multi-racial group that trace their ancestry further in time mostly to Africa, as well as Asia, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and to Europe. As of 2016, about 13 million — about 4% of the total U.S. population — have Caribbean ancestry.
Since its founding in 1625 by Dutch traders as New Amsterdam, New York City has been a major destination for immigrants of many nationalities who have formed ethnic enclaves, neighborhoods dominated by one ethnicity. Freed African American slaves also moved to New York City in the Great Migration and the later Second Great Migration and formed ethnic enclaves. These neighborhoods are set apart from the main city by differences such as food, goods for sale, or even language. Ethnic enclaves provide inhabitants security in work and social opportunities, but limit economic opportunities, do not encourage the development of English speaking, and keep immigrants in their own culture.
Trinidadian and Tobagonian Americans are people with Trinidadian and Tobagonian ancestry or immigrants who were born in Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago is home to people of many different national, ethnic and religious origins. As a result, people of Trinidadian and Tobagonian descent do not equate their nationality with ethnicity. The largest proportion of Trinidadians lives in the New York metropolitan area, with other large communities located in South Florida, Central Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Texas, Minnesota, Georgia, and Massachusetts. There are more than 223,639 Trinbagonian Americans living in the United States.
The Caribbean bioregion is a biogeographic region that includes the islands of the Caribbean Sea and nearby Atlantic islands, which share a fauna, flora and mycobiota distinct from surrounding bioregions.
Black Hispanic and Latino Americans, also called Afro-Hispanics, Afro-Latinos or Black Hispanics, or Black Latinos are classified by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget, and other U.S. government agencies as Black people living in the United States with ancestry in Spain, Portugal or Latin America and/or who speak Spanish, and/or Portuguese as their first language.
The District of Columbia is a federal district with an ethnically diverse population. In 2020, the District had a population of 689,545 people, with a resident density of 11,515 people per square mile.
Caribbean immigration to New York City has been prevalent since the late 1800s and the early 1900s. This immigration wave has seen large numbers of people from Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, among others, come to New York City in the 20th and 21st centuries. Caribbeans are concentrated in the Bronx, from 211th Street to 241st Street and Gun Hill Road. There are also Caribbean communities in Brooklyn, especially in the neighborhoods of Flatbush and Prospect Heights.
The cuisine of the Americas is made up of a variety of food preparation styles.
There have been a variety of ethnic groups in Baltimore, Maryland and its surrounding area for 12,000 years. Prior to European colonization, various Native American nations have lived in the Baltimore area for nearly 3 millennia, with the earliest known Native inhabitants dating to the 10th millennium BCE. Following Baltimore's foundation as a subdivision of the Province of Maryland by British colonial authorities in 1661, the city became home to numerous European settlers and immigrants and their African slaves. Since the first English settlers arrived, substantial immigration from all over Europe, the presence of a deeply rooted community of free black people that was the largest in the pre-Civil War United States, out-migration of African-Americans from the Deep South, out-migration of White Southerners from Appalachia, out-migration of Native Americans from the Southeast such as the Lumbee and the Cherokee, and new waves of more recent immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa have added layers of complexity to the workforce and culture of Baltimore, as well as the religious and ethnic fabric of the city. Baltimore's culture has been described as "the blending of Southern culture and [African-American] migration, Northern industry, and the influx of European immigrants—first mixing at the port and its neighborhoods...Baltimore’s character, it’s uniqueness, the dialect, all of it, is a kind of amalgamation of these very different things coming together—with a little Appalachia thrown in...It’s all threaded through these neighborhoods", according to the American studies academic Mary Rizzo.
White Caribbean or European Caribbean is the term for people who are born in the Caribbean whose ancestors are from Europe or people who emigrated to the Caribbean from Europe and had acquired citizenship in their respective Caribbean countries. White Caribbeans include:
The history of Hispanics and Latinos in Baltimore dates back to the mid-20th century. The Hispanic and Latino community of Baltimore is the fastest growing ethnic group in the city. There is a significant Hispanic/Latino presence in many Southeast Baltimore neighborhoods, particularly Highlandtown, Upper Fell's Point, and Greektown. Overall Baltimore has a small but growing Hispanic population, primarily in the Southeast portion of the area from Fells Point to Dundalk.
St. Francis Xavier Baltimore.
