War-industry migration poured southern and Caribbean Blacks into the same Harlem communities

Evidence

The promise of economic integration into some of the most advanced sectors of American production had its impact. As noted, an estimated quarter of a million to a million Black workers and their families migrated during the war years, substantially increasing the populations of the Black communities situated in the critical industrial areas east of the Mississippi. … One unusual and complicating feature of the New York ghetto in Harlem was the presence of two quite different nonwhite populations. By far the larger was the group of southern migrants, but a minority not to be ignored had originated in the Caribbean islands, chiefly the British West Indies, with some from the Dutch West Indies, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. To the 5000 foreign-born blacks who lived in New York in 1900 were added 28,000 more during the war decade. In 1917 the New York Times estimated that they formed one quarter of the population of Harlem. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1000

Categorization

• XREF: The war-driven Black migration pattern connects to the Great Migration historiography and to the industrialization of the North in the same period covered in earlier chapters.