Bahamian Americans  Bahamian Americans are Americans of Bahamian ancestry. There are an estimated 56,498 people of Bahamian ancestry living in the US as of 2015. Bahamians began visiting the Florida Keys in the 18th century to salvage wrecked ships, fish, catch turtles and log tropical hardwood trees. A Bahamian settlement in the Keys was reported in 1790, but the presence of Bahamians in the Keys was temporary. Early in the 19th century some 30 to 40 Bahamian ships were working in the Keys every year. After 1825, Bahamian wreckers began moving to Key West in large numbers. Bahamians were among the first West Indians to immigrate to the mainland US in the late nineteenth century. Many went to Florida to work in agriculture or to Key West to labor in fishing, sponging, and turtling. Two main factors that contributed to increased Bahamian migration were the poor economic climate and opportunities in the Bahamas, as well as the short distance from the Bahamas to Miami. Southern Florida developed Bahamian enclaves in certain cities including Lemon City, Coconut Grove, and Cutler. In 1896, foreign-born blacks compromised 40 percent of the black population of Miami, making Miami the largest foreign-born black city in the US aside from New York. Bahamians in Florida created their own institutions, most notably Episcopal churches. During this time in Florida, black Bahamians faced state-enforced racism. Blacks could not vote, were persecuted by epithets in Miami press, and were not allowed to stay in the hotels that employed them. In 1921, the Ku Klux Klan staged a large rally attacking these black immigrants in Miami. Between 1900 and 1920 between ten and twelve thousand Bahamians moved to Florida, mostly to do agricultural labor, often on a seasonal basis. Florida farmers convinced the U.S. Congress to exempt Caribbean and Latin American émigrés from the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Starting in 1943 Bahamanian workers came to Florida under the British West Indian (BWI) Temporary Labor Program. This program was under the control of private growers from 1947 to 1966. Growers favored Bahamanian workers because they "can be forced to work a regular work program or be deported." The majority of Bahamian Americans, about 21,000 in total, live in and around Miami, with the Bahamian community centered in the Coconut Grove neighborhood in Miami. There is also a growing Bahamian American population in the Atlanta and Oklahoma City areas.