A childhood memory of mine is that of being around 10 years old in the 1980's at the annual Cape Verdean Independence Festival at India Point Park in Providence, RI.
One year, there was a speaker. I remember that he was white, spoke in English and spoke about the Cape Verdean community in New England. I thought, "wow, acknowledgement and from someone held in high regard".
There were white college students in the crowd. They most likely walked over from Brown University. I wondered if they came for the festival or for the speaker. Maybe both.
I heard someone say,"you know, if it were not for him, well, you would not be here right now."
I thought, what an odd statement. Was he some kind of relative or something? No, he was Senator Ted Kennedy.
How did Senator Kennedy affect my life?
Well, first of all my parents hail from the Cape Verde Islands. Cape Verdeans have been migrating to the United States for hundreds of years due to opportunities in whaling and fishing. In fact, more Cape Verdeans live abroad than in Cape Verde itself and the country with the largest number of Cape Verdeans living abroad is the United States.
In 1921, the United States Congress passed the very racist Emergency Quota Act, which established national immigration quotas. The quotas were based on the number of foreign-born residents of each nationality who were living in the United States as of the 1910 census. The flow of migrants from Cape Verde to the United States was halted.
Thanks to the heros of the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made racial discrimination illegal.
A year later, Senator Ted Kennedy fought hard for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that removed the racial quotas from immigration and allowed the continuation of Cape Verdeans moving to the US. An uncle came over first, followed by the rest of my extended family. In the spring of 1976, a young pregnant mother and two babies landed in New York City on a flight from Paris. I had come to America.