Mark Torres was recently honored with the Joseph F. Meany Award by the Association of Public Historians of the New York State in recognition of his book Long Island Migrant Labor Camps: Dust for Blood (History Press, 2021). This award is bestowed in recognition of excellence in a military, maritime or labor history project or publication in New York State.

Dust for Blood was a culmination of years of hard work and diligent research to capture a part of New York history that has never been told before and nearly lost forever. It is the true story that affected thousands of lives for more than half a century a mere 90 miles from New York City.

Long Island Migrant Labor Camps: Dust for Blood

ring World War II, a group of potato farmers opened the first migrant labor camp in Suffolk County to house farmworkers from Jamaica. Over the next twenty years, more than one hundred camps of various sizes would be built throughout the region. Thousands of migrant workers lured by promises of good wages and decent housing flocked to Eastern Long Island, where they were often cheated out of pay and housed in deadly slum-like conditions. Preyed on by corrupt camp operators and entrapped in a feudal system that left them mired in debt, laborers struggled and, in some cases, perished in the shadow of New York’s affluence. Author Mark A. Torres reveals the dreadful history of Long Island’s migrant labor camps from their inception to their peak in 1960 and their steady decline in the following decades.