For civil rights attorney Roger Archibald, the journey from San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, to the courtrooms of New York began with lessons learned during a childhood when even a full meal could not be taken for granted.
Archibald grew up in a working-class household in San Fernando, the son of a carpenter and a housewife. When his father could not find work, money, and sometimes food, was scarce. He remembers nights when his mother used stories, jokes and laughter to distract her children from their hunger. There were evenings when bush tea and Crix crackers were dinner.
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Those experiences, Archibald says, gave him an enduring appreciation for opportunity and a responsibility to help those who have not had the same advantages.
“Those difficult times really gave me an appreciation for not squandering the benefits that you may get later in life because there’s so many others that simply don’t have,” he said.
That philosophy has followed him throughout a legal career spanning more than three decades. One of the ways it manifests is through his commitment to mentoring and paying young interns, particularly minority students who might otherwise be unable to afford spending a summer working without compensation.
Archibald estimates that more than 110 practicing attorneys in New York State have passed through his office during his 35 years in practice, an accomplishment he describes as one of his proudest, but the road to becoming an attorney first required navigating a very different New York.
Archibald migrated to Brooklyn in 1975 and enrolled at Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The transition was not easy. Caribbean immigrants were arriving in a city wrestling with its own racial, economic and social tensions. Archibald recalls that Caribbean students were not immediately embraced by their African American classmates, many of whom were themselves fighting for equality and opportunity. Caribbean accents made the newcomers particularly visible.
“For the first year and a half, the transition and the assimilation was difficult for most of us,” he recalled. “It’s not possible for a lot of us to just lose our Caribbean accents and blend in. So we sort of stuck out.”
Rather than abandon their identities, the Caribbean students began organizing and supporting one another. What started as division gradually became mutual respect.
By the time Archibald graduated in 1978, the transformation was remarkable. The Trinidadian teenager who had initially struggled to find acceptance had become president of his senior class, the first Caribbean student, he recalls, to hold the position.
He understood the significance: there were not enough Caribbean students to elect him on their own. His victory required support from across the student body.
It was an early lesson in coalition building that would later become especially relevant to his work in civil rights.
Archibald traces his decision to become an attorney directly to his parents. Neither had extensive formal education, his father attended school to approximately the fifth grade and his mother to the second. In both Trinidad and the United States, Archibald watched them navigate systems in which race, class, immigration status and even the way they spoke could influence how they were treated.
He remembers seeing them dismissed or overlooked by employers, government agencies, businesses and others in positions of authority.
His parents, however, saw something in their son, believing that he would one day be an attorney because he always spoke out. They created opportunities for their children that they themselves never received. Archibald shared that all five siblings went on to university and earned degrees, including advanced degrees.
“Doing civil rights was just like a rite of passage for me in honor of my parents and what they did for my siblings and I,” he said.
His career would allow him not only to advocate for people whose voices might otherwise be ignored, but also to create pathways for another generation of attorneys.
Nearly five decades after arriving in Brooklyn, Archibald believes the Caribbean identity that once made immigrant students stand out has become one of the diaspora’s greatest strengths.
“I think embracing your Caribbeanness is the best thing that you can do,” he said.
A student of history and an adjunct professor who teaches aspiring attorneys, Archibald is particularly interested in how people’s origins shape their worldview. He points to the enormous influence Caribbean people and their descendants have had on American politics, culture, entertainment, sports and civil rights.
For Archibald, recognizing those Caribbean connections matters because diaspora achievement is part of a much larger story about the region’s influence on the world.
Archibald’s commitment to Caribbean identity extends beyond his legal career.
As president of WIADCA, he sees preserving and teaching Caribbean culture as another form of community service. While the organization is widely associated with Brooklyn’s annual Caribbean Carnival, Archibald stresses that its work extends throughout the year. Programs introduce students to steelpan, costume design, moko jumbie traditions, poetry, dance and other aspects of Caribbean culture.
Its community work also includes Thanksgiving food distribution and Christmas toy drives serving families in Brooklyn.
Archibald’s life has unfolded thousands of miles from the modest San Fernando household where his mother once tried to make her children laugh through nights when there was little to eat. Yet much of what guides him today can be traced directly back there.
The poverty taught him not to waste opportunity. His parents’ experiences with inequality helped steer him toward civil rights. His difficult introduction to Brooklyn taught him the value of solidarity. And his Caribbean heritage became something he learned not merely to preserve, but to use as a foundation for leadership. That pride has also traveled to another generation. Archibald says his three U.S.-born children strongly identify with their Trinidadian heritage.
For Archibald, that connection is part of the legacy.
His journey from San Fernando to Brooklyn is about what can happen when opportunity is paired with memory, and personal achievement becomes a means of opening doors for others.
After 35 years in law and more than 110 attorneys mentored through his office, the lessons of San Fernando remain present in his work. So does the identity that once made a teenage immigrant stand out in the hallways of a Brooklyn high school.
Rather than leave it behind, Archibald made it part of the reason he moved forward.
