The distinction between "black" and "white" in the America to which the Cape Verdeans arrived was defined and the Cape Verdeans faced prejudice. Dr. Dwayne Williams, the executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, spoke about Cape Verdeans to a group at Brown University in Providence in February of 1997. He explained that even when Americans attempted to classify Cape Verdeans as black, and often dismissed them because of that, "Cape Verdeans [still] refused to fit within this framework. That differentiates them." Those Cape Verdeans born in the nineteenth century, and before World War I in the islands and in America, created a distinct identity, separate from their African ancestors. They did not think of themselves as "African Americans" in the same way that the descendants of America's slaves did. For them, their European blood was as much a part of their ancestry as was their African blood. That was true especially for those who settled away from the concentrated Cape Verdean environments of New England, and moved into the Midwest. Because a majority of them were Roman Catholics in a country where few African Americans shared in that faith, Cape Verdean Americans more often found themselves in the company of other white Catholics. Many of these white Catholics were immigrants from Eastern Europe, also struggling to blend into their new country. The Cape Verdeans considered themselves Portuguese and usually expressed that distinction when their identity was questioned.Cape Verdean immigrants, like their fellow white parishioners and factory coworkers in ethnic neighborhoods, spoke a different language. Although many of them were forced into black neighborhoods because of their skin color, earlier generations of Cape Verdean Americans maintained a society separate from other African Americans surrounding them. Their customs, their language, and their religion kept them together in closely-knit extended families. Cape Verdeans, into the middle of the twentieth century, often had large immediate families, with five or more children. For Catholics, practicing a faith that banned birth control and abortion, children were accepted as a natural consequence of marriage. For Cape Verdean Catholics endured a past marked by great uncertainty because of droughts and famines, and children were accepted not only as a matter of their faith. They were also received with joy at the prospect of continuing on and surviving for generations to come.Read more:*
Cape Verdean Americans - History, Modern era, The first cape verdeans in america
We should hang cape verdians 
Shameful.
