The Immigrant Experience Collection
This collection represents a collaborative project created by Montgomery College’s Anthropology Department and Montgomery History. Dr. Maria Sprehn, along with several of her student assistants, conducted these interviews with first- and second-generation immigrants and their families over the course of many years (2018-2023). Montgomery History’s archivist Sarah Hedlund has organized their stories into a dynamic online exhibit called “The Immigrant Experience in Montgomery County.”
While the exhibit displays each person’s story through a visual overview and features clips from their interviews, this collection contains the full interviews with transcription, all images, and any other materials donated by the interview subjects, who are valued members of Montgomery County’s immigrant population.
Explore the collection below, organized by interview subject.
Felicien Bidzimou (Republic of Congo)
Felicien Bidzimou is from Pointe-Noir in Congo-Brazzaville, officially known as the Republic of Congo, where he taught history in a public high school. After two civil wars occurred in Brazzaville, free speech became very limited, and as a teacher he was even more in danger of being targeted by those in power for promoting unpopular opinions. Because of this situation, he took an opportunity to leave his country in 2004. He lived first near Atlanta, Georgia, then spent six months working in Alaska, finally settling in the Washington, D.C. area where he used the money he had saved to bring his wife and children to the U.S.
He moved his family to Montgomery County in 2008 to attend Montgomery College, then applied for graduate school at Howard University in 2013, where his existing master’s degree in history (earned in Congo) allowed him to begin a doctoral program. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Howard in 2020.
Juana Gonzalez (El Salvador)
Juana Gonzalez left Cacaopera, El Salvador, for the United States in 1978 because job opportunities in her home country were few and far between. While her childhood dream was to become a businesswoman, her motivation for leaving El Salvador was to provide a better education and future opportunities for her children. She worked as a housekeeper in Maryland for a diplomatic family and for a time was separated from her children, Pablo, Sara, and Ana, who had remained in El Salvador. They were able to join her a few years later. Juana was able eventually opened her own Mexican and Salvadoran restaurant and food truck business in Derwood. Not only did she reach her goal to become a businesswoman, but she also supported and guided her children in reaching their educational goals. All of her children went on to professional careers.
Will Jawando (Nigeria)
Will Jawando’s father, Olayinka Jawando, was born in Lagos, Nigeria. As a young man in the early 1970s, he won a scholarship to study in America, and took that opportunity to escape the violence of the Nigerian-Biafran War. He enrolled as a political science major at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, where he met Will’s mother Kathleen Gross, a graphic design major who had been born and raised in Kansas. The two married in 1975, despite objections from her family. To escape the difficulties faced by a mixed-race couple in rural America, the Jawandos moved to Long Branch, an already-diverse and affordable community within Silver Spring, in Montgomery County, Maryland. Their son, William Opeyemi Taofik Alabi Jawando, was born in 1983.
After his parents divorced, Will’s father was largely absent from his life, along with any Nigerian cultural knowledge he might have shared. When Will was 19 years old, a family friend offered to accompany him to Nigeria for a visit. While there, Will was able to reconnect with family members, as well as come to a deeper understanding of his heritage which allowed him to rekindle his relationship with his father back home. They traveled to Nigeria together a few years later. When Will was elected for the first time to the Montgomery County Council, he wore to the inauguration a traditional Nigerian agbada, the formal dress of the Yoruba, to simultaneously honor the memory of his father and his Nigerian heritage.