“The West Indians in America!”: Racial Capitalism, Everyday Talk, and the Evolution of Political Blackness in New York City, 1900–1940

Abstract This article examines how Afro-Caribbean immigrants navigated, challenged, and ultimately reshaped the racial and political terrain of early twentieth-century Harlem. Drawing on the framework of racial capitalism and the concept of political Blackness, the paper traces the interplay of labor market stratification, ethnic civic life, and party realignment in the making of a new Black political order. It excavates how Afro-Caribbean migrants, initially maligned as “foreign,” were positioned as both labor competitors and cultural interlopers—and how they responded by building transnational institutions, cultivating parallel civic worlds, and, eventually, forging coalitions that redrew the boundaries of racial belonging. This study shows how party politics—not cultural affinity or the racial order—created space for Afro-Caribbean incorporation, culminating in their ascent as key power brokers in Harlem's Democratic machine. Through archival records, press coverage, labor surveys, and organizational correspondence, this study reveals that political Blackness was not inherited or inevitable—it was constructed through contestation, coalition, and the strategic reimagining of race in the crucible of urban politics.