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When CAYASCO and I went to the Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum, it was not what I expected. It was huge. The woman who showed us around told us all about the tobacco. She said that tobacco plants were used to make cigars long ago. Everybody in the family did something. Even the kids helped to make the cigars. The youngest workers were 14 years old. However, there were larger 12 year olds that worked as well. The workers got paid very well. They worked from dawn to 3:00pm. After school, the kids would get picked up so they could start working. The sun was very hot. So water barrels were used to quench the workers' thirst. Most times the water was warm from sitting in the sun. The same water was also used to help plant the tobacco seeds.

In the barn the women used thread to sew the fully grown and picked tobacco leaves together and hang them. This would start the curing process along with the help with of heat and a large pot. The good thing about this was the side panels of the barn could be open to let fresh air in. Last year 140 Jamaicans worked here. This year there are 120 Jamaicans working there. The tour guide told us that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also worked on a tobacco farm like this one somewhere in CT.

You would think drying tobacco smells bad but it smells really sweet. I felt the seed from which the tobacco came from and you would not believe they could grow to be so tall. The dried tobacco was brown and easy to break. Broad leaf tobacco grows best in tropical weather. Tobacco plants need to be humid. Broad leaf has 12 or so leaves per plant. The top leaves are broken off to enlarge upper leaves. There are many varieties of Broad leafs. When they are drying they hang in rolls. Shade tobacco has 18-24 leaves per plant. Workers use a pattern in the picking the tobacco. After a cigar is made a hydro-lick press is used to make the wrapper, then put their symbols on.

At the Connecticut Historical Society, the movie about the West Indies said in the 1400s-1800s there was enslavement. The workers had to pick sugar cane so it could be made into products that would be sold in the United States of America. In the 1800s West Indians were kidnapped as slaves. In the 1900s there were a good amount of job opportunities in CT. In the 1940s there was World War and there were contracts were mostly for men who spoke English. In the 1950s women came for better jobs. Kids came with or after their mothers. In conclusion, West Indians came to CT get better jobs such as tobacco picking, gun making at the Colt company, also people from the West for a better life or to be out of slavery.