The People Who Made A Church

by Angeline Lopes

Advisor name: Charles Shively
Second reader: Thomas Buckley

Abstract:
Angeline Lopes has used a variety of primary sources: newspapers, interviews, church records and the internet in documenting an important story. She documents how a group from Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) adapted to their new surroundings in New Bedford through a church which they themselves largely built. The work is well-researched and concise, and the people discussed are very interesting folks.
Lopes' work builds on that of Marilyn Halter, whose Between Race and Ethnicity explores the strange United States engagement with the color line (which W.E.B. Dubois predicted would dominate the 20th century). Lopes also effectively uses David R. Roedinger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991) in her analysis.

Her work highlights how local the United States division between black and white is. As Lopes points out again and again, the official government classifications never did fit the community experience which she has captured so well in this project. Cape Verdeans identified themselves in the beginning by their particular island of origin (Bravas or Fogos) not by color or necessarily by language. The U.S. census listed the lighter skinned children as "Portuguese" and the others as "Black" or "Negro."