The same self-confidence and initiative which
enabled substantial numbers of them to move into professional
employment made others into political radicals. Unaccustomed to
the intensity of racial hostility and harassment which they found
in America, they reacted with anger. They had not been trained
since birth in attitudes of submission and nonresistance. This
was the phenomenon which created Marcus Garvey and the United
Negro Improvement Association. The West Indian community had
been gradually merging with the larger Afro-American society. It
never established a separate place of residence, and the second
generation became mixed with the larger Afro-American community.
After the Second World War, there was a fresh wave of emigration
from the West Indies to America, but the 1952 Immigration Act
drastically reduced the West Indian quota, thereby 'deflecting
this stream of emigrants to Britain.
In contrast, the Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Caribbean
did establish separate communities. After the United States
acquired Puerto Rico, a sizeable number of Puerto Ricans moved to
the mainland.
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