Post-emancipation employers sought immigrants as cheap replacements for enslaved labor

Evidence

The problem of low wages, of course, was created by former enslavers looking for the cheapest labor possible as a replacement for the free labor system of chattel slavery that had been outlawed. They thought the immigrant population would fill that need. They also hoped to get immigrant support for their political representatives, mistakenly assuming that all immigrants desired to assimilate and bought into the privileges of white supremacy. … What happened instead was that the Sicilians’ “social and economic status encouraged them to empathize with black people and support Republican and Populist candidates over their white supremacist rivals.” This would prove fatal for some. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 121