AH Challenge: No African-American 20th century 'Great Migration' north and west

WolfBear

Well-known member
Quite a lot happened in those 4 years:

US entry into WWI - a national campaign for 100% Americanism and pressure to not act like a "hyphenated" American if that connected you with the enemy (for German-Americans) or made you unenthusiastic for working with our allies (for Irish-Americans). The war effort, mobilization, conscription, and tighter blockade also further limits immigration during the 20 + months the US is at war.

Accelerates methods to substitute for decreased immigration from Europe [African-American migration, southern white migration, Puerto Rican migration]

The Bolshevik revolution and other chaotic political agitations in Europe - creating an association between Eastern European immigrants and leftist radicalism. And those immigrant groups and ethnic strife, as new nation states get set up and struggle over their borders.

Post-war - with the restoration of international shipping lanes, immigration lanes quickly rise again back up to pre-war peaks by 1921, alarming Americans after the wartime pause.

Plus, the years 1914-1917 had probably also seen an immigration slowdown because war and conscription in Europe probably increased ticket prices reduced European employment, and cut down on opportunities for young men to migrate in those years, so the normal baseline Americans were accustomed to had fallen in those years and substitution from the south was probably occurring in those years too.

Without a WWI at all, the setting to a lower baseline, and normalization of substitution methods, while not necessarily avoidable, could slow down quite a bit.

What I find interesting is that support for a literacy test remained constant between 1913 and 1915 (almost two-thirds of both houses of the US Congress) even though WWI broke out since then and then increased by a bit by 1917, thus making its passage possible over President Wilson's veto.

I also found it interesting that at least one prominent US person in 1917 predicted that the literacy test would be just the beginning of US immigration restrictionism rather than its end:

This seems like your best bet here. The challenge, of course, is how to delay this by more than one or two decades at the very most. Even in 1917, the US Congress passed a literacy test over Woodrow Wilson's veto, and it was already foreseeable even back then that there would be more where that came from:


This prediction itself appears to have been made in 1917, shortly after the literacy test was passed by the US Congress over President Wilson's veto.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
BTW, interesting fact: The Second Great Migration (1940-1970) was more intense than the First Great Migration (1910-1940):

GreatMigration1910to1970-UrbanPopulation.png


Apparently the development of an effective cotton-picking machine might have had something to do with the greater intensity of the Second Great Migration:


Urban migration in the twentieth century
When John and Mack Rust invented the first reliable cotton picking machine in 1936, they could not have imagined the sociological impact it was to have. Perfected in the 1940s, the machine could pick as much as fifty men at one-eighth the cost. It gradually replaced Southern, mostly black field hands. Out of work, they turned northward to earn a living. Three-quarters of the 6.5 million blacks who migrated north between 1910 and 1970 left the South after the cotton picking machine came into widespread use. Jim Crow may have started the great migration, but it was the emergence of this new technology that fueled it.

Black migrants settled mostly in Northern and Midwestern cities where they found work in low-skilled jobs. Barred from most residential areas, their neighborhoods hardened into overcrowded crime-plagued ghettos. Whites, facing an inhospitable intrusion into their lives, began a migration of their own to more remote parts of the city and eventually to the suburbs.

With the passage of civil rights legislation in 1964, new residential opportunities opened for blacks. They began their own urban exodus, following whites to the suburbs. By the end of the twentieth century, most whites with the means to leave the central city had already done so. Black flight, however, was alive and well. Starting from near zero in 1960, by 1990 32 percent of metro-area blacks lived in suburbia, 39 percent by 2000.

But escape from the inner city is a highly selective enterprise. It is an option open mostly to the right half of the bell curve. Consequently, urban flight creates a cognitive discontinuity where the city meets the suburbs. Left behind in the city is a human residue wanting in human capital. Unemployment, welfare dependency, drug addiction, coarseness and incivility are its hallmarks, low IQ its nub. Below we characterize the discontinuity, closely estimating mean IQs of inner-city and suburban dwellers, black and white.

(The article itself is an analysis of average IQs for blacks and whites in both Baltimore City and Baltimore County. Suburban blacks and whites are, on average, smarter than their same-race urban counterparts.)
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
But - when does *selection* by literacy evolve into hard limitation by quantity and nationality? Or is the next evolution a selection limitation to literacy in English only, or English and a couple other select languages?

And note that education and literacy levels are variable, and pretty much always trend up over the years, with ever-expanding primary education mandates. Literacy rates will naturally begin to catch up with literacy requirements.

FWIW, this article is really useful in talking about the evolution of the US's immigration quota system:


You can find its full text for free on LibGen.

Basically, immigration quotas by nationality began being proposed in the early 1910s, albeit initially as an anti-racist way to control immigration by aiming to control immigration in an evenhanded manner. It was even proposed to repeal the Asian Exclusion Acts and instead to apply the general quotas to Asian immigrants as well in order to create greater fairness on this front. But of course Congress was unfortunately still fond of Asian exclusion back then, so this specific idea went nowhere, but after the literacy test was passed in 1917, the quotas idea became more and more attractive as the logical next step for this.

Even before 1917, though, some immigration restrictionists viewed immigration quotas as the next logical step after a literacy test for immigrants is passed:


But they did want to pass the literacy test first because they had devoted years of efforts to pushing it through and thus were not willing to give up on it right now.

Also, this is from way earlier, but you might enjoy reading Henry Cabot Lodge's 1891 article against the New Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe:

 

raharris1973

Well-known member
FWIW, this article is really useful in talking about the evolution of the US's immigration quota system:


You can find its full text for free on LibGen.

Did you ever grab the full-text off of LibGen? Could you pass via PM?
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
You can also type in:

10.2307/40972243

On the Sci-Hub website:


In the spot where it says "enter your reference" and then click the "open" button to the right.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
CSA not only win war for freedom,but do that with black soldier help.As a result,blacks get freedom and gradually become first class citizen.They do not have reasons to leave.
And those who try,are persecuted in USA even more - and everybody knew that.

P.S Not my idea, i read such scenario on AH once,forget title,as usual.

Per the OP, the divergence must be post *1868*.
 

Atarlost

Well-known member
Is there an opportunity for the USSC composition to shift enough for the grandfather clauses in voter literacy tests and poll taxes that allowed them to let poor whites through to be ruled as equal protection violations? That would force southern elites to choose between sacrificing their poor white voter base and letting blacks vote. The latter would see blacks dominating the politics of black majority states. The former would see severe backlash that would lead to an earlier voting rights amendment (as working class northern whites would fear their elites also stripping away their votes) that would result in blacks dominating the politics of black majority states.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Is there an opportunity for the USSC composition to shift enough for the grandfather clauses in voter literacy tests and poll taxes that allowed them to let poor whites through to be ruled as equal protection violations? That would force southern elites to choose between sacrificing their poor white voter base and letting blacks vote. The latter would see blacks dominating the politics of black majority states. The former would see severe backlash that would lead to an earlier voting rights amendment (as working class northern whites would fear their elites also stripping away their votes) that would result in blacks dominating the politics of black majority states.

Grandfather clauses actually were declared unconstitutional by SCOTUS in 1915:

 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Grandfather clauses actually were declared unconstitutional by SCOTUS in 1915:


Yes, but that was a narrow decision which allowed states to continue administering literacy tests while exempting whites for other reasons. SCOTUS even explicitly ruled in favor of this all the way down the line in 1959 with Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, ruling that they fell under a state's general authority to "determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised."


That would force southern elites to choose between sacrificing their poor white voter base and letting blacks vote.

The problem is that it doesn't, it just requires them to come up with new exception clauses. That's why the Guinn v. United States decision that WolfBear cited had no meaningful effect whatsoever.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
@raharris1973 In regards to immigration, it's quite fascinating: The US was considerably more anti-immigration relative to Canada in the mid-20th century based on their immigrant percentages:

FT_19.01.31_ForeignBornShare_ImmigrantshareofUS_2.png


The US's immigrant percentage dipped to just below 5% in 1970 before rising again.

In contrast, Canada's immigrant percentage never dipped significantly below 15%:

projection.png
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Yes, but that was a narrow decision which allowed states to continue administering literacy tests while exempting whites for other reasons. SCOTUS even explicitly ruled in favor of this all the way down the line in 1959 with Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, ruling that they fell under a state's general authority to "determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised."




The problem is that it doesn't, it just requires them to come up with new exception clauses. That's why the Guinn v. United States decision that WolfBear cited had no meaningful effect whatsoever.

Yeah, in response to the Guinn ruling, Oklahoma said that anyone who was registered to vote before this ruling was automatically registered to vote but that everyone else had just a two-week window to sign up to vote before they would be permanently prohibited from doing so. Of course, what Oklahoma did was subsequently struck down by SCOTUS as well:


And Yes, literacy tests were legal until the 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed them. Based on modern jurisprudence, one could of course strike down literacy tests or even things such as IQ tests for voting on grounds of disparate impact.
 

raharris1973

Well-known member
Basically, immigration quotas by nationality began being proposed in the early 1910s, albeit initially as an anti-racist way to control immigration by aiming to control immigration in an evenhanded manner. It was even proposed to repeal the Asian Exclusion Acts and instead to apply the general quotas to Asian immigrants as well in order to create greater fairness on this front.

I wonder if beyond the general 'fairness' aspect the proponents had a pragmatic diplomatic goal in mind. Switching to a quota system applied to Asians (as well as Europeans), especially one using an early base year like 1890 or 1880, could have had fairly similar limiting effects on Japanese immigration as the the Gentleman's Agreement or Asian exclusion, but without singling out Japan or any Asian country for discriminatory treatment. [Well actually, a later base year like 1910 would exclude more Chinese, and earlier base year like 1880 or 1890 would exclude more Japanese but be more generous to Chinese].
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
I wonder if beyond the general 'fairness' aspect the proponents had a pragmatic diplomatic goal in mind. Switching to a quota system applied to Asians (as well as Europeans), especially one using an early base year like 1890 or 1880, could have had fairly similar limiting effects on Japanese immigration as the the Gentleman's Agreement or Asian exclusion, but without singling out Japan or any Asian country for discriminatory treatment. [Well actually, a later base year like 1910 would exclude more Chinese, and earlier base year like 1880 or 1890 would exclude more Japanese but be more generous to Chinese].

One could, of course, also base quotas on Asian groups' share of the total US population, in which case their share of the quotas would be even smaller since out of the total US population, much less than 1% was Asian. In real life, the US shifted its quotas from the 1890 US census to the demographics of the total US population in or around 1929, if I recall correctly. It was viewed as a fairer way to achieve what the 1924 Immigration Act (which had quotas based on the 1890 US Census) set out to do.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
I don't think there was that much pragmatism in play, because a policy of pragmatism would have stuck to the Gentleman's Agreement rather than expanding the original Chinese Exclusion Act into the broader Asiatic Exclusion Act. Rather, the policy was heavily driven by the desire to be seen actively catering to domestic racism, especially since much of that racism was being pushed by labor unions and they were extremely violent about it.

The turn of the century "race riots" weren't so much riots as actively planned domestic terrorism / mass murder campaigns carried out by organized labor, and the government didn't stop them because they didn't want to, never because they couldn't.
 

raharris1973

Well-known member
One could, of course, also base quotas on Asian groups' share of the total US population, in which case their share of the quotas would be even smaller since out of the total US population, much less than 1% was Asian. In real life, the US shifted its quotas from the 1890 US census to the demographics of the total US population in or around 1929, if I recall correctly. It was viewed as a fairer way to achieve what the 1924 Immigration Act (which had quotas based on the 1890 US Census) set out to do.
When did the shift from the 1890 census calculation basis for quotas to the 1928 demographic basis occur?
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
When did the shift from the 1890 census calculation basis for quotas to the 1928 demographic basis occur?

As I wrote above, around 1929. Specifically in early 1929 according to this article:


It's worth reading. It talks about this process as well as how these quotas were calculated. Initially Britain got an even larger proposed immigration quota but then it got somewhat reduced due to newer research and German + Scandinavian outrage.
 

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