Stories of Ellis Island
Eliza (Griffith) Ishmael & Percy Ishmael
Federal Regulation of Immigration: 1892-1924
After colonization, Ellis Island passed through several hands, including New York state and finally the federal government, which used it for several fortifications.
Beginning in 1875, the federal government began to take a more active role in the regulation of immigration and began passing laws to exclude people deemed undesirable. In 1882, for example, the first of several “Chinese exclusion acts” was passed during a period of intensive, anti-Asian xenophobia. All of these laws meant a more centralized and bureaucratized approach to U.S. immigration, and construction began at Ellis Island. Opening in 1892, construction continued until 1897, when a fire consumed most of the new construction. After an architectural contest, new plans were drawn up, and new facilities were opened in 1900, with additional construction and island expansion extending over the next decades. This was the most active period for Ellis Island, and from 1892 until the passage of restrictive quotas in 1924, 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island.
What was immigration like for them? It was not, as it is today, a lengthy process involving multiple filings, interviews and lawyers. For most of the people arriving at Ellis Island, the process took a few hours and required nothing more than matching one’s name against a ship’s manifest, undergoing a cursory medical examination, and answering a few questions. Passports and visas were not widely used until World War I.
This was the case for approximately 80 percent of people entering through Ellis Island. But other people found their experience there more problematic. Among them, people who were excluded from immigration and people who were found by officials to be undesirable and then deported. These included people lawmakers had excluded as a class as well as people assigned the ambiguous category “LPC”: likely to become a public charge. People singled out for medical problems could also be deported, although many were treated on Ellis Island itself in hospital facilities that still exist on the other side of Ellis Island from the main hall.
Eliza Ishmael was born Eliza Griffith in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1893. Though located in South America, Georgetown was culturally connected to the English-speaking Caribbean region and locals shared a pan-Caribbean identity. Like many Caribbean islands, British Guiana was a major sugar producer for the British Empire and Black Guyanese lived with the legacies of slavery and realities of colonial rule. Eliza Griffith was born within this context and only attended grade school and learned needlework like many other Black Caribbean women of her time. By the 20th century, she moved to Barbados where she met and became engaged to Percy Douglas Ishmael.
Percy D. Ishmael (born in 1894) served during World War I as part of the British West Indies Regiment. The British government barred Black soldiers from fighting in the Western Front so many Black soldiers were relegated to service positions. Percy Ishmael guarded German prisoners of war guard in a Canadian prison. After the war, he moved to New York and petitioned the British Consul General for permission to marry his fiancee, Eliza Griffith.
Eliza Griffith disembarked at Ellis Island a day early on July 14, 1920, and was detained until Percy reached the immigration station. Despite the 1917 U.S. law requiring immigrants to pass a literacy test, she passed the exam and moved through the medical inspection without incident. During her stay, she likely encountered African American middle-class women, from the White Rose Mission, founded by Victoria Earle Matthews (a former slave turned activist) and Maritcha Remond Lyons (a Black suffragist and educator). Originally aimed at single Black women from the South, the White Rose Mission increasingly served Black Caribbean women migrating to New York at the turn of the century. Between 1915 and 1920, over 8,000 Black Caribbean women immigrated to the United States.
Eliza’s move to the United States did not free her from patriarchal and colonial norms. Her entrance into the country depended on her marriage to Percy. When Percy arrived on Ellis Island, immigration officials took the couple to a New York municipal building where they were married. Her experience mirrored that of many Black Caribbean women in the early 1920s who rushed to reunite with family in the United States before stricter laws took effect. In fact between 1920 and 1924, over 13,000 Black Caribbean women entered the country trying to immigrate before the doors closed.
After leaving Ellis Island, the couple settled in Harlem where Eliza worked as a seamstress and Percy labored as a carpenter. Class, gender, and color restrictions relegated English-speaking Caribbean women like Eliza to low-wage jobs. Eliza and Percy, however, still participated in Harlem’s vibrant community. They baptized their daughters, Rose (1921) and Grace (1928), at St. Cyprian Episcopal Church, which primarily served Black Caribbean immigrants. Eliza and Percy naturalized in 1931, six years after petitioning for citizenship. By 1940, the couple had moved out of Harlem and into Long Island City where most of their neighbors were children of Polish and Irish immigrants.
Source: Cargo & passenger vessel Marine Robin - Brought BWI guest agricultural workers from Jamaica to New York in 1944: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Marine_Robin_(1943)