History of Black Immigrant Groups in Boston

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Global Boston is a digital project chronicling the history of immigration to greater Boston since the early nineteenth century. Examining different time periods and ethnic groups, the site features capsule histories, photographs, maps, documents, and oral histories documenting the history of a city where immigrants have long been a vital force in shaping economic, social and political.
Boston University 2016
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Cape Verdeans

Cape Verdean Student Association of Boston College celebrating publication of a new Cape Verdean Kreyol-English dictionary, 2016. Courtesy of Daija Carvalho/Mili-Mila.com.

Cape Verdeans
Settled by Portuguese in the mid-fifteenth century, the Cape Verde archipelago consists of ten arid islands off the coast of Senegal in West Africa. As the Portuguese imported slave labor from the mainland, the islands soon became a center of the slave trade and a provisioning point for ships traveling along the African coast. In the mid-nineteenth century, severe drought conditions and poverty drove many former slaves and mixed-race Cape Verdeans to seek work on whaling ships plying the Atlantic. Some later settled in the whaling port of New Bedford, setting in motion a migrant stream to southeastern Massachusetts that peaked between 1890 and 1921. Coming mainly from the islands of Brava and Fogo, the early migrants were disproportionately male, often migrating seasonally on packet ships run by Cape Verdean companies.

Postcard showing the Cape Verdean island of Saõ Vincente, early 20th century.

Migration declined dramatically in the early 1920s under US immigration restriction and tight Portuguese controls on Cape Verdean emigration. Even after passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, emigration rates remained low; it was not until the Republic of Cape Verde won its independence in 1975 that foreign visas became more widely accessible. By the 1980s, Cape Verdeans would be migrating across Europe, Brazil, and the US, but particularly to New England, which was well known because of its historic connections to the islands.

The new immigrants differed in many ways from the old. Their island origins have been more diverse—they come not only from Brava and Fogo but also from Saõ Tiago, Saõ Vicente, and Saõ Nicolau. The gender ratio of the new wave has been much more balanced, and the newcomers also include the more prosperous and educated as well as the poor.

Settlement

During the first wave of migration, most Cape Verdeans settled in New Bedford, as well as in adjacent areas of southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Over the course of the twentieth century, a small migrant community developed in Boston, but most of the city’s Cape Verdean population has arrived since 1975. Coming earlier than other African national groups (who mainly arrived after 1990), Cape Verdeans are the city’s largest African group and the sixth largest foreign-born group overall. Constrained by racial discrimination and segregation, Cape Verdeans have settled in predominantly black and Latino areas of Roxbury and Dorchester, especially in the area between Dudley Square and Upham’s Corner. The city of Brockton, an older industrial city located between Boston and New Bedford, has been another key settlement area, with Cape Verdeans making up roughly a third of the city’s foreign-born population in 2014.

Work

With the decline of whaling in the late nineteenth century, Cape Verdean immigrants moved into maritime jobs on the docks and on merchant ships, as well as doing seasonal agricultural work picking cranberries in southeastern Massachusetts. A smaller number found work in New Bedford’s textile mills, but usually in less desirable, lower-paying positions.

The second wave of Cape Verdean arrivals also initially found work in factories in the Boston and Brockton areas, but gradually moved into the service industries as manufacturing plants closed down. Although Cape Verdean immigrants have not been known for occupying particular employment niches, they have developed a vibrant small business sector of restaurants, groceries, real estate and insurance offices, and other enterprises. In recent years, the second generation has also been moving into professional, managerial, and civil service occupations.

 

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(English)West Indians

Boston Caribbean Carnival in 2007. Courtesy of BostonCarnival.com.



West Indians

Because of its maritime location and historical connections to the Caribbean and the slave trade, Boston has been home to black West Indians since colonial times. Voluntary migration to the city began in the late nineteenth century, but it was not until the 1910s that a more permanent West Indian community emerged. Their numbers would increase to roughly five thousand by the early 1950s, or roughly 12 percent of the city’s black population.

Postcard showing Jamaican workers loading bananas in Port Antonio, Jamaica, ca. 1905.

During these years, immigrants came mainly from the islands of Jamaica, Barbados, and Montserrat. West Indians came to rely on migration as a survival strategy amid longterm structural problems in the British island economies, including over-reliance on single cash crops, exploitative foreign commercial activities, and an underdeveloped manufacturing sector. Perpetually low wages and high unemployment drove many Jamaican and Barbadian men to seek work building the Panama Canal in the early twentieth century, and many later used their earnings to subsidize family members’ migration to the US. Seeking greater economic stability, West Indian newcomers also came north in search of better educational opportunities for their children.

Advertisement for United Fruit Company’s Great White Fleet, ca. 1920.

But perhaps the most important reason that West Indians ended up in Massachusetts was the United Fruit Company’s direct steamer service from Boston to Kingston and Port Antonio, Jamaica. Headquartered in Boston from 1899 to 1938, the United Fruit Company (a predecessor of Chiquita) was one of the world’s largest banana and tropical fruit producers. By 1920 more than eighty West Indians were arriving in Boston per year via United Fruit’s Great White Fleet, either as ticketed passengers or as workers who stowed away or jumped ship.

Immigration dropped off precipitously after passage of the McCarran Walter Act in 1952, which assigned restrictive quotas to colonies in the western hemisphere. After 1965, however, the ceilings were raised, and many Jamaicans and Barbadians made use of family reunification provisions to reunite with relatives in the Boston area. In the 1990s, sizeable new migrant groups also began arriving from Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Vincent. This new wave has also included more highly educated professionals, whose skills have helped them secure H-1 work visas.

Settlement

West Indians settled largely within or near existing African American communities in Boston, reflecting the role of racism and segregation in shaping the choices of black immigrants. In the early twentieth century, they settled mainly in the Crosstown area of the South End (around Massachusetts Avenue) and in the historically black sections of Cambridgeport. By the late 1930s, some West Indian families—along with African Americans—were moving south into Roxbury as Jewish families moved out.

The diffusion of West Indian settlement accelerated after 1968 when the Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group agreed to end racially discriminatory lending practices across a swath of Roxbury, Dorchester and northern Mattapan. With mortgages now more readily available, West Indian families were among the first to purchase homes in these formerly white (and mainly Jewish) neighborhoods along Blue Hill Avenue. By the 1980s, these areas became predominantly black, with visible concentrations of new immigrants from Haiti and the West Indies. A smaller percentage of West Indians have also moved to the suburbs, mainly to Randolph, Malden, and Brockton.

Work

In the early twentieth century, most West Indian newcomers—whatever their education or skills—were limited to employment as laborers, service, or domestic workers. Most men worked loading freight on the docks or railroads, or as janitors or porters. West Indian women found work primarily as domestics. For many of these newcomers, who were among the most educated and driven in their home islands, such jobs provided higher wages but were clearly a step down in status.

For the new wave of immigrants arriving since the 1960s, service work has become even more important. West Indian women continue to find work in childcare but have also moved into the burgeoning healthcare industry, from nurses’ aids to hospital administrators. Increasingly, West Indians and their children have been accessing higher education and pursuing careers in professional fields such as teaching, nursing, business, and civil service. Although their mean incomes surpass those of native-born blacks, they continue to lag behind those of native-born whites.

 

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Dominicans

Red Sox baseball legends David Ortiz and Pedro Martinez were among the best known Dominicans in Boston, and best loved by the local Dominican community. Courtesy of the Boston Globe.



Dominicans
According to recent federal census surveys, Dominicans are the largest immigrant group in Boston. They have been moving to the region since the 1950s, and especially after the death of Rafael Trujillo, a brutal dictator who was assassinated in 1961. A period of political instability followed, and the US intervened, sending troops to Santo Domingo in 1965. Elected in 1966, President Joaquín Balaguer proved to be another repressive leader who arrested and tortured his political opponents, driving many to emigrate. Balaguer’s industrial development program also stalled in the 1970s, leading to falling wages and widespread unemployment. Economic woes continued in the 1980s, with soaring consumer prices, joblessness, and currency devaluations that led many Dominicans to look for better opportunities abroad.


Birth province of Dominicans who immigrated to metro Boston from 1952-1999. From Enrico Marcelli, et al., Permanently Temporary? The Health and Socioeconomic Integration of Dominicans in Metropolitan Boston, Center for Behavioral and Community Health Studies, San Diego State University, 2009.

While most went to New York, a sizeable Dominican community formed in Boston by the late 1960s. Most of these early arrivals came from the northern Cibao region around the cities of Santiago and Salcedo. Another key source of migration to Boston was the Peravia province west of Santo Domingo, the capital city, which also sent many migrants. Beginning in the 1980s, other provinces such as La Altagracia on the east coast and María Trinidad Sánchez on the northeast coast also became popular sending regions (see map). Some Dominicans arrived directly from the Dominican Republic; others were secondary migrants from New York or came by way of Puerto Rico, making the journey in rickety boats called yolas.

The early arrivals tended to be more urban, educated, and middle-class, but in the 1980s and after, more working-class migrants arrived, some of them from small towns and rural areas. The biggest surge in immigration occurred in the late 1980s to mid-1990s, partially in response to the amnesty provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which allowed formerly unauthorized migrants to adjust their status and sponsor other family members.

Settlement

Initially, Dominicans settled near existing Puerto Rican and Cuban communities in the South End, Roxbury and the Port area in Cambridge. In the 1980s, however, the South End and the Port saw their Latino populations decline under pressures of redevelopment and gentrification. During this period, Jamaica Plain became the most important new center of Dominican settlement. Many of its residents came from the village of Miraflores and other towns in the province of Peravia.

By the 1990s, however, gentrification and rising housing prices began to drive Dominicans out of Jamaica Plain, pushing many to nearby Roxbury and to neighborhoods such as Dorchester, Roslindale, South Boston, and Charlestown. Like other Latinos, they have spread widely across the city and beyond. By the twenty-first century, Dominicans were moving out of Boston to northern suburbs like Lynn, Chelsea, and Salem, and especially to nearby Lawrence, a Dominican-dominated city about 40 miles to the north. Today, the majority of Dominicans in the metro area live outside the city of Boston.

Work

Dominican immigrants originally found work at local shoe factories, garment shops, and other manufacturers, even as these industries were declining in the sixties and seventies. Dominicans today continue to be disproportionately concentrated in manufacturing, but many have shifted over to the service sector. They have been especially prevalent in janitorial work, food service, building maintenance, childcare, construction, and transportation. While the second generation has made gains in technical, professional and managerial occupations, lower educational attainment—both in the Dominican Republic and in Boston—continues to be a challenge

 

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Haitians

Haitian students at an ESL class at the Haitian Multi-Service Center in Dorchester, 1987. Courtesy of the Boston Globe.



Haitians
Coming in search of higher education and professional opportunities, the first wave of Haitian settlers began arriving in Boston in the late 1950s and 1960s. Mainly professionals, artists, and intellectuals, the early arrivals were drawn from the island’s urban Catholic, French-speaking elite. Violent repression and human rights abuses under US-backed Haitian President Francois Duvalier (1957-1971) continued under his son Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971-1986), driving still more into exile. A more diverse group of Haitians arrived in Boston after 1980, including Kreyol-speaking middle-class and poorer migrants from both rural and urban areas of the island.

While political instability, violence, and poverty continued to fuel the Haitian diaspora after 1980, biased US refugee policies (that favored those from Communist countries) meant that a growing number entered as unauthorized migrants. Some were later granted asylum or Temporary Protected Status under the 1990 Immigration Act, including those fleeing the destructive hurricanes of 2004 and 2008, as well as the devastating earthquake of 2010. Boston’s Haitian population also grew as a result of secondary migration from Miami and New York, with the region’s educational institutions as a major draw. With a diasporic community that is now more than fifty years old, greater Boston is one of the top three destinations for Haitian immigrants to the United States, and Haitians make up one of the largest foreign-born groups in the metro area.

Patterns of Settlement

The city’s early Haitian settlers originally clustered around two Catholic parishes in south Dorchester. Still predominantly white in the 1960s, the parishes of St. Leo and St. Matthew in the Franklin Field (now Harambee Park) neighborhood soon became the center of Boston’s Haitian community. As the migrant population grew, settlement expanded southward into Mattapan, then a predominantly Jewish district. Beginning in 1968, Haitian home ownership in the area grew precipitously after the Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group instituted a federally backed home loan program for black buyers. By the 1980s, Mattapan Square had become the heart of the city’s Haitian community, anchoring a crescent of settlement that extended north up to Roxbury and south to Hyde Park. Across the Charles, a smaller Haitian community had developed in East Cambridge, but by the 21st century, gentrification and rising housing costs had convinced most new arrivals to look elsewhere.

Led by a growing professional class in the 1980s, Haitian immigrants also fanned out into surrounding suburbs. Most moved southward, with Randolph and Brockton becoming the two most popular destinations, but several thousand also moved north to Everett and Malden. By 2010, the majority of Haitian immigrants in the metro area lived outside of Boston and Cambridge.

Workforce Participation

Since their arrival in Boston in the late 1950s, Haitians have been concentrated in the healthcare professions and services. Some of the city’s pioneer settlers were doctors seeking advanced medical training and employment, while subsequent generations have been dominant in the nursing profession. Ranging from registered nurses to certified nursing assistants, the nursing professions employed roughly half of all women workers of Haitian descent in the Boston area by the early 21st century.

Haitian men have worked in a variety of occupations, from physicians and educators to transportation and food service workers. Working-class Haitian men have been particularly prevalent among taxi cab drivers. Some of them managed to purchase their own vehicles and medallions; they then leased their cabs to fellow Haitians, creating a niche in the industry. In recent years, though, most have worked for large taxi companies where contract-style labor has yielded long hours and low pay