Did Africans Immigrate to Jim Crow America?



(The Root)



African Immigration After the Civil War

To address your first question: Yes, a few did immigrate willingly. In 1870, the U.S. Congress extended naturalization rights “to aliens being free white persons, and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.”

However, only a trickle of Africans came to the U.S. before 1965, according to historian Ira Berlin, author of The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations. Furthermore, according to an article by Kevin J. A. Thomas in International Migration Review, the limited African immigration that occurred [during the first half of the 20th century] “was mainly driven by non-Black South Africans.” In fact, according to the U.S. census, there were 2,204 foreign-born Americans from Africa living in the U.S. in 1880, less than double that number by 1910. Ten years later, the census recorded 16,126 such individuals.


Pinning Down Details With Few Clues 



After the Civil War, some city directories began to include African Americans in their directories. Free African Americans were even recorded in some pre-Civil War directories, but the practice of including African Americans in these books became more common closer to the 20th century. Often the directories would have some delineation, such as an asterisk or an italicized “c.” for “person of color,” to show African-American households. In other instances, there were entire sections listing the African-American residents of a city, or they were included without designation of race. The decision to include African-American residents in a directory varied by publisher and place, so if you do search city directories, be sure to check a variety of different books to try to locate your ancestors.