Cape Verdean Americans
The presence of Cape Verdeans in the New England whaling inspired the fictional character Daggoo in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick.
[3][4][5] Yankee captains in the packet trade valued Cape Verdeans as crew, because they “worked hard to save what they could while on board vessel they could be hired for much less money than American seamen.
When all others abandoned the old sailing ships, the Cape Verdeans bought the decrepit vessels out of their earnings as seamen and kept patching them up with loving care.
In some cases, they received the ships as outright gifts and "sailed them all over the earth with their own crews and made a modest profit by whaling in the old and tried manner."
Following the abolition of slavery throughout the Portuguese Empire in 1869, the Cape Verde Islands suffered drought, starvation, and economic decline leading to a wave of mass emigration.
[7] Once on whaling ships and in America, Cape Verdean men were able to send home money and news of other family and friends already in “the land of opportunity.” They also sent bidons (gasoline barrels) full of food, clothes, and other items from New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Providence, Rhode Island.
The new regulations also prevented Cape Verdean Americans from visiting the islands for fear of being denied reentry to the United States.
During the same period some Cape Verdean Americans migrated from the long-established East Coast communities to the steel towns of Ohio and Pennsylvania; and to California.
The new arrivals in Boston, Brockton, Taunton and Onset, Massachusetts; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Waterbury, Connecticut; Brooklyn, and Yonkers, New York; and other communities on the East Coast met a Cape Verdean-American ethnic group whose members looked like them, but differed culturally.
This was accompanied by two further actions of independence that aided Cape Verdean migration: broken political unity between Guinea-Bissau in 1980, and the election of António Mascarenhas Monteiro which brought economic struggles that incited emigration.
[7] There are an estimated 265,000 Cape Verdean immigrants and their descendants living in the United States,[18] according to a June 2007 article in The New York Times.
While some islands have a heavy European-descended population, most Cape Verdeans have African ancestry mixed with European and Moorish Jews.
Early Cape Verdean migrants to the United States originally joined Portuguese parishes that had sprung up throughout Southeastern Massachusetts.
[30] Furthermore, in spite of colonial ties to Catholicism and the Portuguese, many Cape Verdeans turned towards Protestantism in response to discrimination and a lack of support from the Archdiocese.
[32] The mythic Daddy Grace also started his first church among a Cape Verdean community in Wareham, Massachusetts in response to rejection by Portuguese Catholics.
The Cape Verdean Jewish Heritage movement is mainly led by the diaspora and its interest is predominantly in preserving history, not practicing doctrine.
The traditional Seder is adapted with a bilingual Haggadah that includes Criolu prayers and elements of Cape Verdean history, such as the addition of Amilcar's Cup.
Cape Verdean music has evolved to be composed of diverse styles and genres that reflect its mixture of racial identities, such as: African, Portuguese, Caribbean and Brazilian influences.
These styles, though distinct, carry a commonality of somber, slow, and soulful tone that often reflects themes of love, longing, and nostalgia.
