Press

SouthCoast civil rights leaders honored

March 21, 2015

NEW BEDFORD — The Waypoint Conference Center on the waterfront was full to capacity Saturday for a breakfast awards banquet by the local chapter of the NAACP and by the New Bedford Historical Society, with a sense of concern and urgency hanging over the proceedings.

This is the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and the estimated 125 people in attendance heard speakers implore them not to let up on the effort to secure and protect voting rights. They were also reminded that 30 states have taken some measure of legislation to roll back voting rights and civil rights in recent years.

The spate of recent shootings involving blacks and police officers also got frequent mention, usually in combination with other threats to civil rights and voting rights.

Dr. Bruce Rose, the interim president of the local NAACP, cautioned “constant vigilance over the civil rights we’ve gained.” He called the backsliding “regressive elements” that threaten to undo much of the progress of the last half century.

The speeches, prayers and singing of “We Shall Overcome” were accompanied by awards to five residents who have done exemplary work on civil rights in SouthCoast.

Many speakers struck the same themes: First, that it’s critical that people register to vote and then actually vote; and second, that they join or rejoin the NAACP, to reestablish strength in numbers when it comes to getting the attention of elected officials.

The local NAACP chapter is part of the New England Area Conference, whose president, Juan Cofield, said, “If we forfeit our right to vote, we forfeit our right to complain,” which brought loud applause.

The keynote speaker was Enola G. Aird, a lawyer from Connecticut who has established the Community Healing Network, dedicated to teaching individuals to reject centuries of lies about themselves and “sign their own emancipation proclamation.”

She said blacks “have to free themselves of a false sense of inferiority,” and her goal is to have the personal emancipation spread across the country in about five years. Right now, she said, “racism has this country and the world firmly in its grasp.”

Other speakers included Mayor Jon Mitchell, who observed that “the Voting Rights Act didn’t get at the heart of endemic racism.” But on the positive side, he said, many cities have elected black mayors, which is something of a political resurgence.

Bristol District Attorney Thomas Quinn III told the gathering of how he first witnessed racism, and people fighting back against it, at age 8 during the 1968 election year in which Alabama Gov. George Wallace was a candidate making an appearance at Lincoln Park in Dartmouth.

Lee Blake, president of the New Bedford Historical Society, introduced the speakers and announced that a mural will soon be painted downtown to commemorate the famed all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first to be called up in the Civil War.

Follow Steve Urbon on Twitter @SteveUrbonSCT. 

With grateful hearts, Cape Verdeans recount ancestors’ journey to U.S.

By SIMÓN RIOS

srios@s-t.com

April 27, 2014 12:00 AM

NEW BEDFORD — Julius Britto and Salah Mattos have known each other for the better part of four decades, two Cape Verdeans hailing from SouthCoast. But not until noontime Saturday would they realize they shared the same magical story, a tale so important to each that, had it turned out differently, they might not be around to tell it.

“It’s a story that we used to hear, but we didn’t really know if it was real or not, but they kept telling us about it,” said Britto, sitting before a group celebrating Dia Cultura de Cabo Verde an event sponsored by the New Bedford Historical Society.

Britto volunteered during a session led by his cousin, the storyteller Len Cabral. Cabral opened the floor and Britto told of the schooner Notice, a U.S.-bound vessel packed with Cape Verdean immigrants in 1902.

Britto, a Rochester resident and president of the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey Association, approached the front of the room. He said his great-grandfather, Ben Varela, first came to the area around 1898 as a whaler. As he came to know the region’s cranberry bogs, he decided it would be a fine place to raise his family.

In 1902, he bought land in Rochester, where the family still has property. Things turned out well for the family, but Varela and his kin nearly lost their lives in the Atlantic Ocean.

“While they were coming over, there was a very, very bad storm,” Britto said.

With the boat disabled, the captain apparently jumped ship, killing himself and leaving the passengers to fend for themselves.

His great-grandfather acted quickly to secure his great-grandmother, grandmother and great-aunt to the main mast to prevent them from going overboard. Then, he and the second mate took over the ship. “And they survived,” he said.

Stranded and convinced they were going to die, their fortune changed when an Italian liner came looming upon them, towing the battered vessel to New York Harbor.

Mattos also had ancestry tying back to the schooner. At 81, the Fairhaven resident said he’d never heard the story told by anyone else but his grandmother.

“My grandmother said that they thought they were going to die,” he said.

“She was dizzy. There was no food, no water, no nothing. They just was there. And this big ship came upon them, and they asked the people in the boat, did they want water and food or their life, and my grandmother said everybody said, ‘Queremos vida.’ They wanted life. And they throw this big rope down, tied it onto the ship, and the ship was brought into New York.”

People in the audience wiped the tears from their cheeks after he finished.

“I want to thank you for that story,” Mattos said, “because that’s my story.”

Britto said they always believed the story as it was told, but they never thought much about it until his sister went to Ellis Island and found the Notice’s manifest. On it were the names of their ancestors.

They later found a 1902 New York Times article chronicling the saga. According to the article, dated Aug. 6, the Italian steamship Sardegna reached port from Naples with a “little battered, waterlogged, almost dismasted schooner” in tow.

The 71-foot schooner had been built 35 years before in Gloucester. On June 27, it had set sail for Providence, and on July 21, it was “struck by a squall which carried away several spars and spread her planking.”

Sighted by the Sardegna 13 days later, the Notice was “drifting helplessly.”

“They were all natives of Brava, which is one of the Cape Verde group of islands, and were bound to join the Portuguese colony near Providence, R.I.,” the article said.

A subsequent Times story reported that 30 of the schooner’s 47 passengers were not on the manifest, giving rise to suspicions that they were being smuggled.

On Aug. 10, the Times reported that nine of the passengers had been released from Ellis Island.

More than 100 years later, in a hall at the New Bedford Whaling National Historial Park, sat three men whose ancestry dates back to that incredible passage.

Cabral said it had been told to him by his father.

“He told that story when he was a teenager,” Cabral recounted. “He came to a Cape Verdean’s house in New Bedford, and you know when you go to a Cape Verdean house, the grandmother or the elder in the house would say, ‘Who’s your mother? Who’s your father? Who’s this? Who’s that?”

“And he said my grandfather is Ben Varela, and she (gasped), and she hugged him and cried, and she told him the story that he just told you. She said your grandfather saved us.”

Cabral smiled contentedly. The power of storytelling had been proved.

“So thank God people say, ‘Who’s your mother? Who’s your father? What’s your mother’s maiden name?'”

Press release  October 19, 2014

The Veteran’s Legacy: A Documentation and Preservation Workshop

We all know the old question, “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” In 2014 we are commemorating events from several wars in our nation’s past—some, like the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War I, whose last veterans passed long ago, some, such as World War II   and the Korean War, in which we are in a race against time to record the memories of those who fought and those who kept them in the field. In honor of Veteran’s Day, the New Bedford Historical Society is reaching out to the community to make sure the stories of our veterans are saved. On November 8, museum consultant Madelyn Shaw will lead “The Veteran’s Legacy: A Documentation and Preservation Workshop” at 2:30 to 4:30 PM.  Shaw will discuss how to document and preserve a veteran’s story or acknowledge their service. The workshop will be held at the Corson Building at the New Bedford Whaling National Park at 33 William Street.

World War II veterans are now entering their 80’s and many have unforgettable accounts that contribute to family as well as national history. Recently the National Archives and Library of Congress teamed up on The Veterans History Project, which gives every veteran the tools and opportunity to contribute their own record of military service. Using the website as a guide, this workshop will walk participants through the kinds of documents, photographs, letters and diaries, memorabilia, and other artifacts that constitute the archival record of a veteran’s service and how it can be collected or recovered. We will discuss how best to preserve papers and artifacts, and look at the questions a museum or library would ask before accepting a collection. References will be available for those interested in sharing any findings with their local military museum and other cultural and historical centers.

“I started learning about military history because of a curiosity about my father,” Bob French, board member of the Society explains. “Documents like discharge papers and old letters connect us to our past and gives us a glimpse of our own family history. There is a lot more in that paperwork than meets the eye.” French will also lead an oral history project that will interview veterans of color and their families that can be kept as family archives.

Most of us know a veteran – a grandfather, a mother, a son, or a niece. Learn how to preserve their stories, and acknowledge their service. For more information on the program or to reserve a seat, please contact the New Bedford Historical Society at info@nbhistoricalsociety.org or call (508) 979-8828.