{"value"=>"<p>This series consists of correspondence, financial documents, and meeting minutes organized into five sub-series. The governing documents and Executive Board sub-series outline the establishment, early goals, and development of the Antigua Progressive Society.</p> <p>The general office files provide a portrait of the scope and breadth of the organization's activities. Of particular interest are several letters, such as the 1938 and 1949 recommendations sent to the Royal West India Commission and Secretary of State for the Colonies respectively, which divulge immigrants' political sensibilities, diasporic sympathies, and nascent pan-Caribbean identification. Also significant are several letters from Antigua, including two from V. C. Bird, the first prime minister of sovereign Antigua. While these letters commend the Society for the work it pursued for citizens at home, they also outline conditions on the island. Evinced in the Junior League file is the Society's concern with grooming its younger members for the responsibilities of fundraising and administrative work. Also evident is the intent to develop among Junior League members a connection with, and sensitivity to, the histories and cultures of the African diaspora of which they were a part.</p> <p>Included in the organizations sub-series are letters; invitations to events; and programs that document the interactions between the Society and other Caribbean associations in New York such as those founded by immigrants from the sister island of Barbuda, Anguilla, Bahamas, Dominica, Montserrat and St. Vincent. In addition to showing how the migration experience birthed a burgeoning pan-Caribbean identification among immigrants, this sub-series also gives evidence of the Society's commitment to the well-being of the community and city in which they lived.</p> <p>The substantial financial records sub-series provides a fairly comprehensive look at the Society's financial development and health over the span of four decades as the group built its membership and purchased a building on which it conducted extensive renovations in the late 1960s. Although the majority of the Society's financial records are in this sub-series, financial reports and other documentation can be found elsewhere in the records, in both the Membership and Committee series. The bulk of the records include disbursements and receipts ledgers which give a daily accounting of the Society's business activities including banking, insurance, taxes, building expenses, and general operations. These ledgers also capture the organization's fundraising efforts and contributions to other benevolent societies. Complementing these ledgers are handwritten and typed reports (1934 - 1940), check receipt books (1959 - 1966), bank statements (ca. 1940s - 1970s), and miscellaneous receipts and notes that, in some cases, fill in gaps from the journals.</p>"}