Research

Dr. Maddox is completing a book project, A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity (UPenn Press, 2024). This book examines the significance of mutual aid societies and benevolent associations formed by Anglophone Caribbean immigrants to New York between 1890 and 1940. It explores how immigrant social organizations played a vital role in the formation of transnational identities and facilitated in community building, arguing that participation in these organizations created kinship networks that both empowered immigrants to form a collective “Caribbean” identity and unleashed a political activism among immigrants fighting alongside African Americans to insure their equality in the tumultuous era of American Jim Crow.

The History and Impact of Mutual Aid in America provides a historical reflection of the origins of mutual aid organizing in the United States beginning in the late 18th century, as the first immigrants established homes and communities across the country. Closely examining how and why mutual aid societies first came to be, we can develop a greater understanding of the meaning of community support and collective action as we work to create a more equitable world for all.

Produced with funding from Villanova University’s Albert Lepage Center Covid-19 Grant for History in the Public Interest, awarded to Tyesha Maddox & Daniel Joslyn.

En Espanol—¿Qué Es la Ayuda Mutua?