By NAN Contributor
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. July 3, 2018: A Caribbean immigrant born in Jamaica was among this year’s winners of the Alexander Hamilton Immigrant Achievement Award, which was presented on Saturday, June 30, 2018 in New York City, News Americas has learnt.
Rev. Dr. Mark Bozzuti-Jones, a nationally recognized and much-admired Episcopalian priest at Trinity Wall Street parish, one of four immigrants who were presented with this year’s Hamilton Immigrant Achievement Award at Federal Hall on Wall Street, on a day when millions across the U.S. marched in protest of the Trump administration’s growing anti-immigrant policies.
Rev. Dr. Bozzuti-Jones received his award at the site of the first capital of the United States and where George Washington became the first American President in 1789. Federal Hall is also where the Nevis-born immigrant, Alexander Hamilton, became the first America Secretary of the Treasury on September 11. 1789.
Rev. Dr. Bozzuti-Jones was born in Kingston, Jamaica and went on to study philosophy at Loyola University in Chicago before moving on to receive his master of divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology of Berkeley, California, and a master of arts degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco.
He began his religious career as a Jesuit priest doing missionary work in Belize, Brazil, Guyana and Mexico before going on the join the Anglican Communion. He is the author of a variety of books, including two books on African-American spirituals.
Currently, Rev. Dr. Bozzuti-Jones is Trinity Wall Street’s director of Core Values as well as dDirector of Latin American & Caribbean Relations, and is widely known and admired for his skills as a preacher.
The other recipients of the 2018 Alexander Hamilton Immigrant Achievement Award were Irish immigrant Maeve Higgins; French immigrant Jean Claude Gruffat and South Korean born Dr. Jung Kim.
Hamilton, who is widely credited with saving the young US nation from ruin with his brilliant financial plans to successfully find the new government, and which led the United States to become the most successful nation on Earth over the next 200 years, is buried in Trinity churchyard at the corners of Wall Street and Broadway.
