The Emancipation Reclamation: The Forgotten Story of the Immigration Act of 1924 and How It Propelled Black Americans into the Middle Class

The Immigration Act of 1924 ended the so-called Great Wave of immigration that brought over 20 million Europeans to America’s shores. It also spurred the Great Migration, the movement of over six million African Americans from rural southern states to the industrialized north, and into jobs that otherwise would have gone to immigrant workers. Even many critics of the 1924 law recognize that it was instrumental in the formation of the Black middle class. In 1965, Congress began a second great wave of immigration that continues to this day, to the disproportionate disadvantage of Black Americans.