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This is Who We Were: In The 1970s

1975: Jamacian Immigrant & Caregiver

Jamaican Andrea Spencer emigrated to New York and, after seven years and several jobs, found an ideal position caring for two elderly sisters.

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Life at Home

Jamaica, the land of sunshine and laughter, had been hard on Andrea Spencer, even as a child.
“All my years I been working, since I was 13.”
Seven years earlier, at age 38, she was ready for a change in a place called New York City.
Her goal was not to leave Jamaica for America; rather, it was to exchange Jamaica for New York City where most Jamaican immigrants had settled.
Friends who had worked there came back and said the same thing: “Twasn't bad; but ‘twasn't good’; I knew it had to be better than Jamaica.”
While Andrea was still a small child, her mother died; her father left her in the care of her grandmother and disappeared.
At 13 she left school to work as a domestic servant in a boarding school for boys.
Her job was to clean up and feed the younger boys, some of whom were very young.
She made $0.30 a week plus free room and board.
Once a year she rode a bus for four hours each way to visit her grandmother in the country—“Once a year was all I could go.”
Her next job was decidedly a step up, working for “a nice, white woman” in Kingston, Jamaica.
Next, she took a job at a wholesale dealer, where she cleaned the lobby and the shelves.
“All my life I work for white folks and never had any trouble.”
By the time Andrea made the decision to leave, she had three children, two of whom were on their own; the youngest was left with an aunt.
Andrea was determined to come alone: “No man come with me. I like being alone, choosing my own friends. Doing what I want. I'll never marry nobody again.”
Her ticket out was a scheme that involved New York housewives, Jamaican lawyers and women like herself.

Andrea Spencer left Jamaica for New York City when she was 38-years-old.

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The 1965 U.S. Immigration law included a work certificate provision that permitted individuals to enter the United States to take jobs that could not be filled from the resident workforce.
The employer in each case had to provide evidence that he had unsuccessfully tried to find suitable workers from inside the country.
Often employers did not try very hard, but most ran an advertisement in the local newspaper.
Andrea paid 100 Jamaican dollars to a lawyer in Kingston; in exchange she received the work certification permit, a plane ticket, and placement as a live-in servant with a family in New York.
She agreed to work one year at $55 per week plus room and board; the remainder of what she would have earned went to the officials who financed her trip and processed her papers.
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The agreement ended after 12 months, after which time she could negotiate her own working and living arrangements.
The employment plan was similar to the managed service system used in the colonial era to bring employees to the Americas.
The twentieth-century version was modified to bring a large number of domestic servants to wealthy U.S. homes in search of a maid or a cook.
Jamaicans were particularly suited to this form of immigration; as native English speakers, they were attractive for families seeking domestic help.
In 1968, the year Andrea emigrated, 17,000 Jamaicans entered the United States, 13,000 of whom were female; one in three of the women was a “private household worker.” life at Work
After seven years in New York, Andrea Spencer finally found the ideal job caring for two elderly sisters.
The two women, both in their seventies, lived in a nice, overly decorated home, paid her well and, most important of all, treated her with respect.
Her life in America had not begun that way.
Andrea's first assignment upon arrival in America was caring for an upwardly mobile couple and their four children, who were accustomed to having their own way.
The couple, who loved parties, dressing up and being seen, went out four to five times a week, leaving the children with babysitters or nannies.
On the day Andrea arrived, the children were bold enough to lay bets in her presence on how long she would survive before quitting.
Previously, the longest tenure of a nanny was 16 months; the shortest was 10 days.
The two younger girls bet that Andrea would make it three to four months; the boys were determined to break their own record and see her gone in under 10 days.

Top and above: Andrea's birthplace, Jamaica.

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Quickly, it became clear they had overestimated the sweetness of her Jamaican accent and underestimated the strength of her Jamaican upbringing.
When she hit the one-year mark and was free to seek other employment, the couple offered to double her pay and guaranteed one weekend a month off.
Flattered, she accepted the raise and immediately regretted her decision; she lasted another seven months before moving on.
Her next job was as a live-in maid to two wonderful children and their four horrid dogs.
Every morning she awoke with eager anticipation of the children's new day and dreading the task of taking the four dogs for their walks.
Invariably one of the little beasts would pee in the elevator on the way down from their ninth-floor apartment.
Then at least two of the dogs would begin yapping as they walked through the marble lobby, attracting attention and humiliation.

Andrea's determination and hard work afforded her a comfortable life in New York City.

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She tried taking the dogs out one at a time instead of as a group, but that took too much time away from the children, who were her primary responsibility.
So she moved on and discovered that working with two elderly sisters reminded her of Jamaica, where she had spent so much time around her grandmother.
Also, it was less painful; working with children sometimes reminded her of her own kids, whom she had not seen in years.
The women's Manhattan apartment was very Victorian in fashion, simply jammed tight with their travel memories; at every turn were souvenirs from their many trips abroad with their husbands when they were still alive.
Every day was an education for an impoverished girl from Jamaica.
In addition, the two women planned their day around the civilized habit of holding high tea most afternoons at 4 o'clock.
This quaint habit also reminded her of Jamaica and the classic culture of the former British possession, where residents liked to believe that Bach lived in every Episcopal hymn and Shakespeare was still a living force.
Another plus was the sisters' preference that she not live in-marking the first time since she'd come to America that she had her own place.
Andrea proudly picked Bedford-Stuyvesant, which seemed to have attracted enough West Indians to be an inland Caribbean island all by itself.
She arrived at 7 each morning, woke the sisters, prepared a light breakfast, and settled in for the first political argument of the day.

Bedford-Stuyvesant was home to a vast influx of West Indian immigrants, including Jamaicans.

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Women's roles evolved into less traditional paths.

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The older sister, Marlene, had once danced with Vice President Richard Nixon at the inaugural ball in 1957, believed that Watergate was “a big nothing,” and that he was being hounded for political purposes.
The younger sister, by two years and 11 months, was once married to a Cabinet undersecretary in the Kennedy Administration and vehemently believed that Nixon was only getting his “just desserts.”
From there the arguments would move to the cause of inflation, the impact of the Vietnam War and the role of women in tomorrow's America.
Marlene was particularly proud of her granddaughters, who were focused on careers in law and medicine “if the men don't block their way.”
The younger one, Jill, would then talk about her grandchildren and how arts and motherhood were still a good combination in the twenty-first century.
“In my day, home cooking is what kept the boys coming back,” she would say and then laugh.
Once a month the sisters hosted the Thursday Bridge Club, an event that included drinks, dinner, cigarette smoking, exuberant conversation, and cards.
Andrea relished the exacting preparation, the elaborate meals and the carefree conversation.
“Truly Americans have created Heaven on Earth and given it to themselves,” she often thought.
Life in Manhattan was quite a contrast to Bedford-Stuyvesant, where the music pulsed from every building, the food smells leapt from every kitchen and she thought of herself as a Jamaican.
On any given Sunday afternoon, Jamaican teenage boys would be competing with the kids from Barbados on who could produce the best music.
All the time the goal was to impress the girls.
“In my day,” Andrea thought to herself, “the goal was the same—to impress the girls—only I was too young to know and now I'm too old to care.”

Life in the Community: New York City

Andrea Spencer loved her apartment in the nation's second most populous black community, the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York City.
Bedford-Stuyvesant was also home to the nation's largest concentration of voluntary black West Indian immigrants, a designation that included Jamaicans.
For more than 35 years, Caribbean immigrants from Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Granada, St. Vincent, and Montserrat had been congregating in Bedford-Stuyvesant's 653 square blocks.
And for most of this time the cultural differences between West Indians and African Americans had been lost on outside observers.
Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, geographic distinctions and cultural habits were clearly defined and strictly noted, cultivated and respected.
Four of the six elected officials from Bedford-Stuyvesant were West Indian, including Representative Shirley Chisholm.
In the arts, every West Indian was openly proud of the national success of West Indian stars Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.
A quarter million Jamaicans inhabited New York City.
Bedford-Stuyvesant was also the place to see the split between American blacks and West Indians.
West Indians were said to work harder and succeed more than American blacks, who resented the comparisons.
Mostly, the two groups stayed away from each other; mixing only brought trouble.

A quarter million Jamaicans lived in New York City.

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Jamaican Immigration Timeline

1619 Twenty indentured workers from the Caribbean islands arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, where they worked as free persons. 1850s Large numbers of Jamaicans were recruited by American and European companies to harvest sugar in Panama and Costa Rica. 1869 Jamaican workers were imported as “swallow migrants” to harvest crops in the American South after the end of slavery; most returned home when the harvest was complete. 1881-1914 A total of 90,000 Jamaicans were recruited by the United States to work on the Panama Canal. 1930 The Census Bureau reported that 100,000 documented first-generation Caribbean immigrants and their children lived in the United States. 1965 Britain restricted the number of immigrants accepted from the newly independent black majority colonies, including Jamaica.
The Immigration Reform Act opened the way for a new surge of immigrants from the Caribbean. 1966-1970 The United States legally admitted 62,700 Jamaicans. 1971-1975 The United States legally admitted 80,600 Jamaicans.

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Citation Types

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MLA 9th

"1975: Jamacian Immigrant & Caregiver." This is Who We Were: In The 1970s,Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GH1970_0015.

APA 7th

1975: Jamacian Immigrant & Caregiver. This is Who We Were: In The 1970s,Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GH1970_0015.

CMOS 17th