(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to "Generation Rising."

I'm Anaridis Rodriguez.

Tonight we're joined by Dr. Claire Andrade-Watkins, a renowned filmmaker, historian, and founder of Spia Media Productions.

Claire and her team are dedicated to preserving the stories of the Cape Verdean community, and in 2025, they are focusing on the historic Sheldon Street Church, the first Cape Verdean Protestant church in America.

Claire, welcome.

- Delighted to be here.

- So am I.

- As a second generation born in Fox Point, the Tockwotton Cape Verdean first settlement of Cape Verdeans of Rhode Island.

And thank you for uplifting the importance of the work of me and my team.

And you know, this is a maritime state, so everything's got nautical terms.

So, yes, I'm a captain of this ship, but if you're a real sea people like Cape Verdeans are, you're only as good as your crew.

So the crew or the people who've been working as a devoted team of stewards of the Tockwotton Cape Verdean community, like me, are the descendants of the first Cape Verdean families in Rhode Island that settled in what we're calling Tockwotton, down near where India Point Park is.

And we started arriving in the late 19th century and the settlement actually was in 1892 when Antonio Coelho from the island of Braga, it was one of the severe droughts.

Cape Verde had periods of drought and famine.

And we were a former Portuguese colony off the coast of Africa.

And for centuries, New England's been connected to Cape Verde from after the American Revolution.

They had sailed to the islands and particularly on Braga to pick up crew to go work on the whalers, on the whaling ships, because, you know, New Bedford and Nantucket were the capitals of the whaling industry up through the 19th century.

So Cape Verdeans have always had a maritime connection.

It was colonized by the Portuguese in 1462 and Cidade Velha was one of the first slave markets in West Africa.

So Cape Verde has always been at a crossroad of everything, of transatlantic history for the last 500 years.

And that's where we come from, in that tiny little state.

So in the 19th century and early 20th century, people in Cape Verde were itinerant migrant workers, agricultural workers.

So the ships would come from Braga, the packets, sail to Cape Cod for people to pick cranberries, the seasonal fruits, and go back to Braga, back and forth.

But in 1892, there was a really bad drought and Antonio Coelho, who was from Braga, bought the Nellie Mae, a packet, went back to Braga, picked up his family, and instead of bringing them back, went from the Cape and then up to Rhode Island and where people settled.

So Antonio Coelho and his family settled in the Tockwotton area and that became the center of the first Cape Verdean community.

- What we know today as India Point Park you say is the Plymouth Rock for Cape Verdeans.

That's something that I didn't know until I was doing the background on this show.

- Isn't that amazing?

You know, history is who asked the question shapes the answer.

And as a historian, you know, you're not looking for the answer.

You're looking for the next question.

And good history's really messy, really messy.

You've gotta be a detective.

And it's not that our history wasn't there, it was absent from the official record.

So what we're doing is reinserting a thread of Rhode Island history that is an important one that adds to the tapestry of what makes Rhode Island so wonderful.

Isn't that great?

- It is beautiful.

- And we're great detectives.

We didn't know we were the first voluntary.

Our grandparents who arrived, who were the members of my team, we're the descendants of them, they had to leave Cape Verde 'cause of drought and famine.

It was a poor colony, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa.

And one of the things about the Cape Verdeans, and I think maybe immigrants in general, is resilience and the courage to dream.

How do you step on a little packet ship?

And I've been to Cape Verde several times and I've met the packets when I was a little girl and they used to land at India Point Park, the packets that brought the new immigrants.

These are tiny ships.

People are crammed up for 30 to 60 days, shoulder to shoulder.

They never see their families again.

- And they're doing this willingly.

- Because you have no choice.

How do you have the courage to leave what you know, sail into the unknown, and thrive?

So I think the Tockwotton, which is now India Point Park, that's where the first settlement was.

And it was a different, you gotta go back to the 19th century, early 20th century Providence.

We are dealing with the port city.

Okay?

You are dealing with sailors in and out.

And we're very much captured in the history of Narragansett Bay.

It's not just Providence.

The history of America started in Rhode Island, literally, you know, from Roger Williams in 1636, from, you know, the slave trade and the ships going out from Newport and Bristol, from the immigrants.

The history of Narragansett Bay is the history of America and our arrival at India Point Park on those docks, we set foot, that was our Plymouth Rock.

And you know what's great about it is all our grandparents arrived with was a trunk full of dreams.

- Mm.

And they made them reality.

The community grew.

- Yeah.

The community, a community.

Being Cape Verdean is a state of mind.

Yeah, we lived in rundown tenements cold water flats, but we shared the same language.

Cape Verdeans were predominantly Catholic.

We had centuries of being isolated on an archipelago.

So we might have come without a lot of material assets, but the things that are the most precious are the ones that you carry in your heart.

Our families created the first Cape Verdean Union, Local 1329 in 1933, the International Longshoremen's, because you know, we needed to provide safety and an economic foundation.

And during the 20th century, Rhode Island and the Port of Providence was one of the biggest revenue sources for the state of Rhode Island.

Who's unloading those ships in the ports of Providence?

Local 1329.

And I'm a descendant of those founders and my cousins and a lot of families still work the boats.

- This is deeply personal for you.

I can see that.

- [Claire] Sorry.

Yeah.

- What was the turning point when you decided that you needed to chronicle this?

- Thank you for that question.

You know, when does somebody become a storyteller?

I think that's a really important question, particularly if you are told when you go to school that your story didn't matter, that it wasn't important.

And I think the displacement created the generational trauma for me 'cause when I left Planet Street in 1970 to go to college in Boston, I didn't know three years later that the home my parents had lived in for 35 years, they were gonna be forced to move.

And you never want to see your parents cry.

You know, I'm easily 20 years older or 15 years older than my parents got the news.

Hardworking people built a community.

All their daughters were doing well in school is you have to move.

I don't know how I would've survived that.

So '74, when I graduated from college, my parents had moved.

And the memories that were kind of burned into my memory of my childhood, which was joy, it was love, it was family, and I didn't realize that we really were in isolated pocket.

I mean, the Cape Verdean community stretched from South Main Street all the way over, what's the boulevard?

Now I-95 to India Point Park.

It was a continuous community of us.

So I think what startled me when I went to college, I said, well, I'm taking my history courses and I'm reading.

I said, what is the story of the Cape Verdeans?

Well, you know, in Moby Dick, they mentioned something about Black Portuguese, but not Cape Verdeans.

And I'm saying, wait a minute.

Doesn't everybody have a grandmother who makes eggs for 30 grandchildren every Sunday?

Don't you have a grandmother down the cape in Onset where you go pick blueberries?

Don't you have people that come from a place called the Old Country?

Doesn't everybody have that?

And you know, I think the biggest challenge for me as a storyteller wasn't that the story wasn't told, but having the confidence to believe that it mattered.

When you go for grants, when you go to history teachers and they're saying, "Oh, Cape Verdeans, nobody needs to know about them.

It's not a big enough cabbage patch."

I think when I finally got the courage to say the story mattered to me, not the story that people wanted to tell based on what they thought they knew about us, I think that's my moment when I got so desperate, when I did my first documentary, "Spirit of Cape Verde."

And I was blessed and gifted to work with an amazing team of pioneering WGBH, PBS, you know, technical people who taught me the importance of knowing how to tell and find a good story.

And even though it might not have been the one that they would've done with the famous anthropologist, archeologist, to believe that your story mattered.

- Mm.

- And you know, I'm just grateful that the elders believed in me and they supported me.

I know behind my back they went, "Oh, God, there goes Claire working on that project for the last 20 years.

Is she gonna get done?

Oh, Claire, sure."

Right?

(Anaridis laughs) But it took 20 years from "Spirit of Cape Verde," to make "'Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican?

': A Cape Verdean American Story."

And in those 20 years, it was the foundation of building still by still, stock footage by stock footage, chronicling all the elders.

I didn't realize until the movie was done and it premiered at the MFA that it had captured the lived history and memory of the generations who came.

It's a love letter.

- I love that.

- "Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican's" a love letter.

Everybody loves it.

And it's not just a documentary.

It's really a good one.

I teach in Emerson for 42 years and your story's only as good as the craft.

And Lord help you if the audio is not good.

All right?

- Okay.

- So you've gotta be really excellent in knowing the craft.

- You talk a lot about lived history.

Is that what makes this documentary unique in how you present it?

- Thank you again for another good question.

There are a lot of terms being thrown around, particularly after it became a priority in the seventies to document the importance of public humanities.

You know, collecting the artifacts, collecting the stories, building legacy.

So when you say lived history, what does it mean for the people from Tockwotton, descendants whose story isn't anywhere on the books?

Well, people have talked about us, but never with us or stories by us.

So a lived history means it's the story that we know.

It means that if you lived the Tockwotton history, you knew Joffa store, you went swimming at the Boys and Girls Club, you had penny candy from Gloria and Bob Solomon on Benefit Street, you went down when the packets came in, you visited all of your cousins, and when you were kids, before there were televisions, we used to open the phone book and read all the names of Andrades because we were all related to them.

Lived history are those little textures that are within your heart and a storyteller.

And I'm fortunate in our team that we recognize that really was our script.

And we believe that it was important, not what people told us we needed to be.

It was who we knew we were.

So lived history is if you were in that space and you touch that piece of paper, every photograph is an elder that either hugged you, kissed you, was at your baptism, or went to your wedding.

- That's beautiful.

- You know?

- That's beautiful.

- We're blessed.

- Now you're here and you have the privilege of the benefit of a RISCA grant.

Tell us what this grant is allowing you to do and how that's connected to the Sheldon Street Church.

- Well, thank you for, again, another question.

The Rhode Island State Council, the arts grant that I just got, it was an artist support grant, which a highly competitive one that selects three artists.

It's a new initiative.

This is the third cohort group.

And it gives me an unrestricted $6,000 a year.

And as a filmmaker, storyteller, that's gonna pay for my archival supplies to hire my videographers.

And it's not just the Sheldon Street story.

What we've been kind of incubating over the last 40 years as we've been slowly stockpiling a reserve of quality digital content.

Every film that I've done is really a standalone Smithsonian library of B-roll, photographs, research, and history.

And what RISCA is gonna allow me to do, one, it gives me the visibility and credibility of being a competitively qualified artist from a very talented group of other artists.

And this builds on, you know, other grants I've gotten.

But this one for me, as a Rhode Island roadie girl, this means a lot.

This means a lot.

It means that it gives us leverage for the vanguard work our team is doing to create a sustainable legacy.

One of the things that we are doing is uplifting stories that we know are important.

I also happen to be a member of Sheldon Street Church, which is celebrating its 120th anniversary in 2025.

And we're still hanging on and we're going to uplift that story because it's a story that we lived.

It's a story that's going to add a special voice to that history of, you know, Benefit Street, of historical architecture, of Providence preservation, of the Indigenous story that's told so well by the folks who are doing the Tomaquag Museum.

Well, here comes us.

And in 2016, thanks again to the help of my team, my colleagues at Emerson, we migrated 40 years of digital content to the cloud.

- That's amazing.

- So now we're getting ready.

And now that I've got the gray hair and the Braga waves of my mother, everything I say is officially wise.

(Anaridis laughs) Right?

So what we are focused on now is generating quality content of all these voices that have been waiting to be shared with Rhode Islanders.

And we're so excited.

Sheldon Street Church is one of them.

Our team also focuses on creating sustainable change.

- [Anaridis] Mm.

- So in August, South Main Street, which was the main thoroughfare of our community, South Main and Wickenden, it was renamed Tockwotton Cape Verdean Way.

And our big legacy project is the Tockwotton Memorial Commemorative Park at India Point Park.

And we represented the proposal again we did in 2013.

That's another talk show.

What's important is what's happening now.

And the Park Commission approved this for us to begin the negotiations for the half-acre lease of land, which is situated right where the community was in India Point Park for us to create the commemorative space beautifully designed by Carol Johnson.

That will be our legacy for generations.

I'm so grateful, really.

- I loved watching some of the archival footage in the little bit that I got to see of the documentary, the beautiful faces, the people smiling, them being happy.

That's what came across to me.

I didn't know South Main Street had this wonderful Cape Verdean community because when you drive down South Main Street today, it doesn't seem like there are remnants of that.

- I know.

But you know, think the stock footage, particularly the collection of beautiful eight millimeter film that DJ Joseph, who was one of the legends on the waterfront, and his son was one of our first team members, and our family photographs and films, these aren't artifacts.

These are family heirlooms.

They are treasures.

Right?

And Jean Joseph had sworn to his mother that none of this would ever be sold, any of it would be given away.

And Jean's footage of South Main Street that is his father had an eye like Flaherty.

His father was a fabulous filmmaker.

His super eight is gorgeous.

It's lush.

But you know, the person who holds the camera, the camera lens is framed by your heart.

You do the shot, wide shot, closeup, medium.

You're focusing on what your heart's telling you to see.

And what's so beautiful about our stock footage is when DJ's shooting it, he's focusing on the face of the people he loves.

It's a different tight shot.

Right?

And it's the same with our other archival footage.

When it's shot with the people, and it doesn't mean that other people, good trained kids who come from film school are Emerson kids.

But you're gonna look at something differently.

When you create an establishing shot, what are you picking when your heart leads you?

And that's what comes across in our films, the magic of that energy.

You can feel it, huh?

- You could.

It was beautiful.

What are you looking forward to as far as the Memorial Park?

What do you think that's going to mean for the Cape Verdean community to have this landmark?

- Hmm.

40 years after we're all gone, when we step back, we have created the digital footprint of our lived experience from South Main Street all the way to Tockwotton.

We have reconstituted the main stories of the union, the San Antonio Association, the first Cape Verdean magnificent organization, the boys in our Boys Girls club, Sheldon Street.

We're not trying to do all the story.

As Glynis Ramos Mitchell, who's the president of our Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean Project, and again, a cradle to grave friend.

We both went to Lincoln School.

She's two years younger than me and shorter.

(Anaridis laughs) But she pushes me around.

She's the one who always keeps us on track.

She says, "Stay in your lane.

Don't look to the left.

Don't look to the right."

This 10 years, this is the new fad of stories.

People want to tell that one.

It's like, stay in your lane.

This is the story the elders asked us to do.

We are the stewards of their legacy.

It's not about us.

It's not about me.

So 40 years from now when our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren can walk down South Main Street and say, "This is where you came from, and let's walk up on Benefit Street and look at the beautiful houses and historical architecture."

It's not like, yes, they displaced us, but good history is messy.

What we've done with our partners is make and as a catalyst of a story that is all of us.

I'm a catalyst for change as an artist.

You know, that's what I do.

I make magic because I have a gift of telling stories and I will never betray the trust.

- What a gift.

- Nor will anybody on our team of us to take it to the finish line.

It's not gonna be easy.

There are gonna be hurdles and bureaucracy and politics to get the park.

Everybody doesn't like it.

- Mm-hm.

- But like one of our other elders of the project says, just 'cause you don't like it doesn't mean you can stop us.

Try to stop a Cape Verdean.

That's all I say.

- It is gonna be hard.

What a gift.

What a gift.

We are running out of time.

I could sit here and talk to you all day and listen to these beautiful stories, but can you quickly tell our audience how they can stay in touch or maybe where they can watch the documentary?

- One of the gifts of the digital age which has made our story accessible is YouTube.

(Anaridis laughs) Our team produces PBS quality work.

And thanks to our team, we're able to, and institutional support from Emerson and my Emerson Mafia, we can churn out the content.

So all of our beautiful documentaries, everything we produce is on YouTube.

- [Anaridis] That's wonderful.

- So you look up Spia Media, SpiaMedia.com.

Also, the whole collections of my documentaries are on Canopy.

So if you have a library or university, you can get all of them because our most important gift is providing the information to teach people.

- Hmm.

- We do it and then it's global.

That's the biggest gift.

If we can teach and pay forward, we're good.

We're good.

- Thank you so much for sharing your gift with us.

Thank you for the work that you're doing for your community and your people.

Your ancestors are smiling down on you right now.

That is such a beautiful legacy to leave behind.

Thank you for being with us today.

- Me and the Tockwotton team thank you.

We've got some exciting things coming forward in the years to come.

So please keep on track with what we're doing.

- [Anaridis] We will.

We will.

- This is just the beginning.

We're really excited.

- We would love to have you back.

- Thank you.

- We have run out of time.

I would like to thank tonight's guest, Dr. Claire Andrade-Watkins.

You can watch this episode and all our past episodes anytime at ripbs.org/generationrising or listen to us wherever you get your podcasts.

(upbeat music)