3.17 - Afro-Caribbean Migration
Why Afro-Caribbean Migration Increased
Afro-Caribbean migration to the United States has a much longer history than many people realize. Africans and their descendants born in the West Indies first arrived in what would become the United States as early as the seventeenth century, when enslaved people from Barbados, Jamaica, and other British Caribbean colonies were brought to British North American colonies to work on plantations. Later, in the early nineteenth century, in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution, formerly enslaved people found refuge in cities including New Orleans, Charleston, Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.
But migration accelerated significantly in the early twentieth century, driven by a combination of economic and political forces. Caribbean economies declined sharply during the First World War, pushing many Afro-Caribbeans to look elsewhere for stability. At the same time, the United States was actively expanding its political and economic footprint across the Caribbean, including its acquisition of the Panama Canal in 1903, developments that created new pathways and incentives for Caribbean migration northward. People came to the U.S. seeking economic, political, and educational opportunities that weren't available to them at home.
The Panama Canal is a good example of how U.S. expansion opened migration paths. Tens of thousands of West Indian workers, especially from Barbados and Jamaica, helped build the canal between 1904 and 1914, and some later moved on to the United States.
The Scale and Impact of Afro-Caribbean Migration
Between 1899 and 1937, more than 140,000 Afro-Caribbean immigrants arrived in the United States, with most settling in Florida and New York, especially in Miami and in New York City's Harlem, places that went on to develop significant, lasting Afro-Caribbean communities.
The arrival of these immigrants into existing African American communities wasn't always smooth, it sparked real tensions in some cases, but it also produced genuinely new blends of Black culture within the United States, as African American and Afro-Caribbean traditions mixed and influenced one another.
This wave of migration also increased the religious and linguistic diversity of African American communities more broadly. Many new arrivals were Catholic, Anglican, or Episcopalian, and came from non-English-speaking islands, bringing languages and religious traditions that hadn't previously been widespread within Black American communities.
Afro-Caribbean immigrants didn't just diversify culture and religion though, they also shaped Black political thought directly. Afro-Caribbean intellectuals contributed to the radicalization of Black political thinking in the twentieth century, infusing the broader movement with their own experiences of Black empowerment and autonomy from the Caribbean. Some of the most prominent Afro-Caribbean figures of this era include Claude McKay from Jamaica, Arturo Schomburg from Puerto Rico, and Marcus Garvey, also from Jamaica, each of whom left a lasting mark on Black intellectual and political life in America.
Required Sources
"Restricted West Indian Immigration and the American Negro" by Wilfred A. Domingo, 1924 (published in Opportunity, October 1924, pp. 298 to 299)
This piece, published in the influential Black journal Opportunity, gives a firsthand perspective from within this era on the tensions and debates surrounding West Indian immigration and its relationship to the existing African American community. Reading Domingo's argument directly captures the real, contemporary conversation happening around Afro-Caribbean migration, showing that the tensions and cultural blending described above weren't just later historical observations, they were being actively discussed and debated by Black writers and thinkers at the very time this migration was unfolding.
Wilfred A. Domingo, born in Jamaica in 1889, was a journalist and socialist in Harlem, the first editor of Marcus Garvey's newspaper Negro World (he later broke with Garvey), and a contributor to Alain Locke's The New Negro. He wrote this article for Opportunity, the National Urban League's magazine, a few months after Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924. That law kept most independent countries in the Western Hemisphere outside the new quota system, but people born in European colonies like Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad were now counted under the quota of the country that ruled them, and West Indian immigration dropped sharply. Domingo's article responds to that change and what it meant for Black communities in the United States.
The Immigration Act of 1924, "to limit the immigration of aliens into the United States, and for other purposes," which came into force July 1, has achieved the object of its framers and sponsors who were mainly concerned about excluding undesirable racial strains. Not only was this accomplished by securing a reduction of non-Nordic Europeans in favor of Nordics, but what is of vital importance to American Negroes, by a palpable discrimination which singled out for quota restriction only those sections of the New World from which any appreciable number of Negroes had come and was likely to come in the future. That this latter achievement is among the "other purposes" of the Act seems of little doubt when the facts are studied and a comparison is made between the present Act and its predecessor of 1921.
The Act of 1921, entitled "An Act to limit the immigration of aliens into the United States," made a perpendicular distinction between immigrants who were eligible to enter the country without special treaty regulations. Those from the Old World were restricted to 3 per cent of their number in the United States in 1910, while those from the New World were admitted on a non-quota basis. In neither case were the immigrants affected by the political status of the country or colony from which they came.
Section 2 of the 1921 Act, dealing with "excepted classes" or non-quota immigrants, included aliens from "the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Mexico, countries of Central and South America, or adjacent islands." Under this provision immigrants from all parts of the Americas were on an equal non-quota basis.
The Act of 1924, section 4 (c), defines the term "non-quota immigrant" as "an immigrant who was born in the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, the Republic of Haiti, the Republic of Mexico, the Republic of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the Canal Zone, or an independent country of Central and South America." By specifically naming Canada and Newfoundland for exemption from quota, placing the word "independent" before countries, and omitting the words "adjacent islands," the framers of the Act very adroitly excluded from the non-quota classes those European colonies in the Caribbean Sea from which American Negroes had been receiving any numerical increase.
Conclusive proof that the Act, which was passed by the present Republican Administration, was intended to erect a barrier against the comparatively slight immigration of people of African descent from the West Indies is found in President Coolidge's Proclamation of June 30. Subdivision 6 of the Proclamation states: "In contrast with the law of 1921 the Immigration Act of 1924 provides that persons born in the colonies or dependencies of European countries situated in Central America and South Ameria [sic] or the islands adjacent to the American continents ... will be charged to the quota of the country to which such colony or dependency belongs." The language is clear and unmistakable. It makes a horizontal distinction between British North America and other European colonial possessions in the New World. The distinction is significant in view of the reason that inspired the Act and the racial stock of immigrants from both groups of colonies.
The law to limit immigration into the United States was agitated for and defended on two main grounds: race and culture of recent immigrants and inability of the country to absorb the huge number seeking admission from Europe. The grounds were qualitative and quantitative. To achieve both ends the Census of 1890 was used as the basis to determine the 2 per cent to be admitted yearly until 1927, after which the maximum will be 150,000 annually. Whether or not a colony is self-governing does not affect the issue. In Europe, England, the Mother Country, the Irish Free State, whose status is similar to that of Canada, Malta, having a form of government like that of Jamaica or Barbados, and Gibraltar, a Crown Colony like Antigua and St. Kitts, are subject to a 2 per cent quota, regardless of their varying degrees of autonomy. The same equality of quota exists between truly independent and powerful countries like England and France and vassal states like Hungary and Poland. In the Western World the law makes no distinction between independent countries like Brazil and Argentina and nominally independent countries like Cuba and Costa Rica.
It is only when colonial possessions are dealt with that a distinction is made. All British North American possessions are on a non-quota basis, while other European possessions are subject to restriction. In practice this means that only those places in the Western World from which any noticeable number of Negro immigrants had been coming are singled out for quota restrictions! With the uniform treatment accorded to British subjects in Europe it cannot be successfully contended that "self-government" inspired the inequality of treatment given to British subjects in the New World. Nor can it be seriously claimed that the number of immigrants coming from the restricted colonies, compared with the number from Canada and Newfoundland, justified restricting the former and not the latter. The contrary is the truth.
According to the World Almanac (1924) the principal sources of immigrants from the New World in 1923 were British North America, 117,011; Mexico, 63,768; and the West Indies, 13,181 (mostly Negroes). If number constitutes a reason for restriction then Canada, rather than the West Indies, furnished the justification. Stating it differently, of the 199,972 immigrants from the American continents who entered the United States in 1923, only 13,181 or less than 7 per cent were from countries with Negro majorities. And as not an inconsiderable portion of the 13,181 were Caucasians, it is clear that the proportion of Negro immigrants who remain in America is less than the proportion that American Negroes bear to the total population. More white immigrants came from Canada and Newfoundland in 1923 than the total number of foreign-born Negroes in the United States that year! Despite this fact and the further fact that while 4,183 West Indians left the United States that year only 2,775 British North Americans and 2,660 Mexicans departed, the former are restricted while the latter are not.
It is nowhere claimed that language or culture constituted the reason for exempting all other American peoples while restricting West Indians. With the exception of English-speaking Canadians, there are no people in the Western World more culturally and linguistically akin to Americans than British West Indians. The great difference between the West Indies and the favored British possessions of North America is that a majority of the inhabitants of the former colonies are of African descent. And this difference explains why the comparatively slight stream of immigration from these islands called for restriction.
Allied by blood to the 12,000,000 Negroes of this country, who have a deep interest in keeping the door of Negro immigration open in these days of discussion of the population question; when everything is being done to make America approximate the Ku Klux ideal of a white man's country by keeping Negroes in a hopeless minority, West Indians can only look to their brothers of the mainland to emulate the late Booker T. Washington who, in 1914, succeeded with the cooperation of other far-sighted leaders in defeating the attempt made at the time to exclude from entry people of African descent. The present law, less frank than the one of ten years ago, has nevertheless achieved the same end, for it means in effect that while the number of immigrants coming from countries that formerly sent a few Negroes will be limited to a couple of hundred yearly, white immigrants will come from Europe to the extent of half a million annually until 1927, and 150,000 after then, while those from Canada and other parts of the American continent will be unlimited. In such a situation, if Negroes are not by their silence to acquiesce in racial discrimination by the Federal government, they will use their influence to see that all immigrants in the Western World are placed upon a quota or none; that the principle of equality among colonies in Europe be applied to colonies in the Americas.
Regardless of explanations and apologies, the bald fact stands out that the present Immigration Act, which is designed to be selective racially, by deliberate discrimination against those countries in the New World from which Negroes had been coming to any extent, while exempting those from which Caucasians are still coming without limit, places Negro blood in despite and serves notice upon American Negroes that they cannot hope to increase their number by immigration. In so many words, they are told that against their natural increase will be pitted not only the natural increase of white America but a constant entry of European immigrants. Such an outlook should engage the serious consideration of the best minds of the Negro race in America.
W. A. Domingo, "Restricted West Indian Immigration and the American Negro" (1924), full article. Source: Opportunity, October 1924, pp. 298 to 299, Internet Archive scan