By far the largest number of these, seventy-three percent, came
from the West Indies and most of them were from the British West
Indies.
By 1940, there were some eighty-four thousand foreign-born
Negroes living in the country. As large as this total might
appear, still less than one percent of the twelve million Negroes
were recorded in the 1940 census. Most of these new immigrants
went to live in large cities in the Northeast, with by far the
majority being concentrated in New York City itself. At the
point when the influx was at its highest, in 1930, seventeen
percent of the Negroes in New York City were foreign born.
An unusually high percentage of these newcomers had held
white-collar occupations-- mostly young professionals with
little hope of advancement in the static economy of the Islands.
Although they were aware of the American racial situation, they
were still unprepared to cope with it. Most of them were
accustomed to being part of the majority in their homeland. They
had experienced discrimination before, but it had not been as
uncompromising as what they found on arrival in America.
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