This paper’s central theoretical and empirical thrust is to examine the

processes of racial/ethnic group formation of early first-generation AfroCaribbean1

immigrants and African Americans in New York City in the

early decades of the twentieth century. These processes, generally called

“ethnogenesis”, turn primarily on the dynamics of social identity

boundary construction. Intersecting race with ethnicity, as I do mostly in

this paper, is an attempt, first, to discern the saliency of race and ethnicity