Abstract: Although most immigrants residing in New York City during the early twentieth century hailed from Europe, the city was also home to many Black migrants born in either the U.S. south or the Caribbean. Using complete count and linked U.S. census data from 1910 to 1940, I document how patterns of social and economic incorporation among Black migrants, both U.S.- and foreign-born, differed from those of early twentieth-century European immigrants. The project also highlights the role of discrimination in shaping social outcomes for Black people in New York City during the early twentieth century.

Bio: Tod G. Hamilton is a professor in the Department of Sociology and a faculty associate of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. His primary research interests lie in social stratification, immigration, and health. His research has been published in Demography, Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, and Social Science Research. He recently completed a book titled Immigration and the Remaking of Black America for the Russell Sage Foundation that documents how immigration trends since the early twentieth century have produced a diverse U.S. Black population. The book also offers a comprehensive methodological and theoretical framework for understanding the integration of Black immigrants into the United States from the early twentieth century to the present. Immigration and the Remaking of Black America is the winner of the 2020 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography and received Honorable Mention for the 2020 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association.

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