User:Alan T. Baumler/sandbox

Bahamian Immigration
Bahamians began visiting the Florida Keys in the 18th century to salvage wrecked ships, fish, catch turtles and log tropical hardwood trees. A Bahamian settlement in the Keys was reported in 1790, but the presence of Bahamians in the keys was temporary. Early in the 19th century some 30 to 40 Bahamian ships were working in the keys every year. After 1825, Bahamian wreckers began moving to Key West in large numbers. Today, the largest Bahamian American populations are in Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Miami, and New York.[citation needed]

Bahamians built and still reside in the oldest inhabited neighborhoods in Miami like Coconut Grove and Lemon City. Bahamians represented 1/3 of the vote to incorporate the area into the new city Miami

Bahamians were among the first Caribbeans to arrive to the mainland US in the late nineteenth century. Many went to Florida to work in agriculture or to Key West to labor in fishing, sponging, and turtling. Two main factors that contributed to increased Bahamian migration were the poor economic climate and opportunities, as well as the short distance from the Bahamas to Miami. Southern Florida developed Bahamian enclaves in certain cities including Lemon City, Coconut Grove, and Cutler. In 1896, foreign-born blacks compromised 40 percent of the black population of Miami, making Miami the largest foreign-born black city in the US aside from New York.

Between 1900 and 1920 between ten and twelve thousand Bahamians moved to Florida, mostly to do agricultural labor, often on a seasonal basis. Florida farmers convinced the U.S. Congress to exempt Caribbean and Latin American émigrés from the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Starting ins 1943 Bahamanian workers came to Florida under the British West Indian (BWI) Temporary Labor Program. This program was under the control of private growers from 1947 to 1966. Growers favored Bahamanian workers because they "can be forced to work a regular work program or be deported."

During this time in Florida, black Bahamians too faced state-enforced racism. Blacks could not vote, were persecuted by epithets in Miami press, and were not allowed to stay in the hotels that employed them. And in 1921, the Ku Klux Klan staged a large rally attacking these black immigrants in Miami.