Kokila Bahadur Guyana Passport
Kokila Bahadur came as a nurse trainee at the Jersey City Medical Center in 1966, the year of Guyana's independence. The first in the Bahadur family to immigrate, Kokila Bahadur sponsored her husband, children and many dozens of other relatives through provisions of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act, the immigration law that profoundly changed the demographics of the United States.
Women's Section, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Masjid, Guyana
This photo of the women's section at an Ahmadiyya Anjuman masjid in Wakenaam, Guyana, was taken during Eid in the 1960s. The Khan family brought it with them to the United States.
Salima and Aliyah Khan, Small Days Photo
This picture of Salima and Aliyah Khan together in Guyana in the 1980s was among the many things they carried from Guyana, including a collection of dolls puchased from across the world, Enid Blyton and Hardy Boys books, an urni that Aliyah wore as a child in masjid, her brother's Islamic skullcap, pamphlets and documents, crystal and household wares.
Mohaiyuddin Khan, 1921
The U.S. Census, passport applications and naturalization petitions unfold the story of Mohaiyuddin Khan, a commercial trader who married, then divorced, a German-American woman.
Mohaiyuddin Khan Photo, 1919
At 5’11’’, Mohaiyuddin Khan was tall and striking, with an aquiline nose, a pointed chin and an oval face. His passport photos show a man who could have passed for Greek or Italian. Indeed, when he landed in New York in 1913, in his mid-twenties, he declared his intention to naturalize and gave his “color” as “white” and his birthplace as London.
Photo of Mohaiyuddin Khan with his wife Gertrude
Mohaiyuddin Khan's passport applications suggest that he was often away from his wife Gertrude’s home in Bedford-Stuyvesant. In 1920, the census showed him living in Brooklyn with her and her German immigrant family. The 1930 and 1940 censuses record her shorn of the surname Khan, using her maiden name again and working for an insurance company, with Mohaiyuddin no longer living with her.
A heavy wooden vase, carried
This photograph was taken in Cumberland Village in Guyana the year before Gaiutra Bahadur's family left for America. Here, the archival creators fellow is sitting in the living room of the Bahadur family home, built by her grandfather born on a ship from India to Guyana a mile from the plantation where he worked as a sugar cane cutter.