A Month To Celebrate.
The vision of National Caribbean American Heritage Month (NCAHM) Program is to promote the recognition of the contributions of Caribbean immigrants to the United States of America from founding father Alexander Hamilton to US Secretary of State General Colin Powell and Hon. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to run as candidate for the President of the United States of America. This year marks the fourteenth celebration of June as National Caribbean American Heritage Month since the original proclamation making the Resolution official was signed by President George Bush on June 5, 2006.During Caribbean-American Heritage Month, we celebrate the achievements and dreams of the millions of people of Caribbean origin now living in the United States while honoring the shared history of joy and perseverance that has united and enriched life across our region for centuries. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of June 2019, the Caribbean-American population of the U.S. was more than 13 million.
Caribbean American Heritage Month puts a focus on a diaspora of people born in the Caribbean islands or the West Indies but tracing their ancestry to Africa and Asia. The history of the Caribbean is wrought with the near extinction of the indigenous people the Caribs and the Arawaks , replaced by European colonialism that populated the islands with African and East Indian slaves to work the sugarcane plantations. The culture , religion and practices of the slaves mixed with the Spanish, French, Dutch and English colonizers that fought over and captured the islands resulted in a melting pot of multi cultural , multi racial, multi religious people. This month we celebrate and acknowledge the struggles and successes of the Caribbean American people to hold on to an identity that is their own, while taking pride in the pathbreakers that helped build this country .
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