Box 25: Archival Secrets, Caribbean Workers, and the Panama Canal

When acclaimed labor historian Julie Greene researched her book The Canal Builders, which went on to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, she explored a cache of first-person essays written in 1963 by the Afro-Caribbean people, mainly Jamaican and Barbadian, who migrated to the Isthmus of Panama to work as diggers, track shifters, or domestic servants in the Canal Zone. Held at the Library of Congress and stored in Box 25 of the Isthmian Historical Society Collection, the essays constitute the best primary source in existence on Caribbean workers’ experiences during the construction project.

Now Greene returns to this fascinating archive, and in this book, shares what it was like to be a migrant laborer on the construction of the Panama Canal. Caribbean workers faced life-threatening illnesses, accidents, racial discrimination, and culture clashes as well as opportunities to materially improve their lives. Greene offers new details on the strategies of the people who built the canal and examines how colonialism, xenophobia, and racism shaped the process of writing and archiving the testimonies into Box 25.

Julie Greene is professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park.