"Negro labor in Florida will not work for the Sugar Corporation": the switch to Caribbean guest workers (Florida sugar, 1943 to 1990s)

SUMMARY"Negro labor in Florida will not work for the Sugar Corporation": the switch to Caribbean guest workers (Florida sugar, 1943 to 1990s) [Connections: Miami & Lake Okeechobee, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDUC Davis Rural Migration News: its table of British West Indian farm guest workers begins in 1943 (13,526 that year); quotes Allison T. French of the US Employment Service (early 1940s): "Negro labor in Florida will not work for the Sugar Corporation…"; from the 1950s to 1990s Florida sugar cane took over half of all US H-2/H-2A farm certifications; about 10,000 H-2 cutters a year in the 1980s, nearly all Jamaican; 1989 class actions sought $100 million in back wages; US Sugar paid $5.6 million to settle; all cane was cut by machine after the mid-1990s, a shift the source ties to the wage litigation. The documentary H-2 Worker (Stephanie Black, 1990, Sundance Grand Jury Prize) was filmed in Belle Glade, Clewiston and Okeelanta and notes Jamaicans replaced Bahamian seasonal workers, who had replaced Cotton Belt migrants

PATTERNAfter the peonage case, the industry replaced Black US workers with island workers on visas who could be sent home, the same Caribbean flow that built Coconut Grove

LENS (WW9)When the people at home said no, they brought in island kin on paper leashes

OPENThe context of French's quote (memo, testimony?) and date; worker death and injury records in the camps

SOURCEH-2 Guest Workers and Florida Sugar (UC Davis Rural Migration News, 2021); H-2 Worker (Wikipedia).