Long Island Migrant Labor Camps: Dust for Blood

Mark A Torres

Long Island Migrant Labor Camps: Dust for Blood
Format
Paperback
Publisher
History Press
Country
United States
Published
22 March 2021
Pages
208
ISBN
9781467147842

Long Island Migrant Labor Camps: Dust for Blood

Mark A Torres

During World War II, a group of potato farmers opened the first migrant labor camp in Suffolk County to house farmworkers from Jamaica. Over the next twenty years, more than one hundred camps of various sizes would be built throughout the region. Thousands of migrant workers lured by promises of good wages and decent housing flocked to Eastern Long Island, where they were often cheated out of pay and housed in deadly slum-like conditions. Preyed on by corrupt camp operators and entrapped in a feudal system that left them mired in debt, laborers struggled and, in some cases, perished in the shadow of New York’s affluence. Author Mark A. Torres reveals the dreadful history of Long Island’s migrant labor camps from their inception to their peak in 1960 and their steady decline in the following decades.

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