[2] Bahamians began visiting the Florida Keys in the 18th century to salvage wrecked ships, fish, catch turtles and log tropical hardwood trees.
Many went to Florida to work in agriculture or to Key West to labor in fishing, sponging, and turtling.
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 Bahamian immigrants in Miami.
[5] 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.
[6] Starting in 1943 Bahamanian workers came to Florida under the British West Indian (BWI) Temporary Labor Program.
In 1939, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted a study of white Bahamian Americans in Riviera Beach, eventually published as Conchtown USA.
[8] Many white Bahamians also settled in Miami, particularly in the Coconut Grove neighborhood, and in Tarpon Springs.
The National Association of the Bahamas, located in Miami, offers primarily social opportunities for the local Bahamian American community.