The story

From the late 1800s through the 1940s, Indian Punjabi men moved to the US, married women of often-Mexican descent, and built mixed Punjabi/Mexican families. We’ve produced a geocoded dataset of members of this community in 1940, based on U.S. Census data about people with the last name of “Singh,” the most common Punjabi name in the U.S.

Here’s why this is important: South Asians have been in the U.S. since at least 1680, but South Asian immigration was blocked in the 1920s due to anti-Asian racism. By 1940, there were several thousand South Asians in the U.S., most male (because women were largely blocked from entering). Because of social and legal barriers, South Asian men could not marry White women, but they were often welcomed in and married into Black, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Creole communities.

This 1940 Singh Census dataset tells us about these Punjabi male immigrants, the women (most often of Mexican origin) they married, and the children they raised. It tells the stories of an unlikely joint community built in the face of racist, sexist, and anti-immigrant policies. (Learn more.)

We need your help! Please explore the data, and develop either digital or handmade maps visualizing the story of these communities.

The data (JSON and CSV)

The data is available in two formats:
  • a rich JSON file containing 962 census records: name, gender, birthplace, marital status, current census location (based on OpenStreetMap geocoding)
  • a flattened CSV file containing many of the most important fields from the JSON
Our GitHub repo includes descriptions of every field.

Three different questions you can answer

  1. Where in the U.S. did these families live?
    • Directions: Look at the census location, i.e. the place where people were living in 1940. You could mark specific regions where people congregated, or concentrate on the larger national spread of the community.
    • Bonus: Was there a difference between the settlements patterns of those who were more or less assimilated? Try distinguishing between the locations of people marked “single South Asian man” and those marked “married South Asian man with kids.”
  2. Were the non-Punjabi wives of Punjabi men immigrants themselves?
    • Directions: Look for records labeled “non-South Asian wife.” Then look at the birthplace and census location fields, either the location names (city, state, country) or lat/lons. How far apart are the points for birthplace and location in 1940? For those that migrated from elesehwre, can you visualize their journeys?
  3. Race is a social construct! Where in the country were census takers most likely to mark Punjabi men as “Hindoo” (i.e. South Asian), as opposed to “White”?
    • Directions: Look at the “raceRecordedNormalized” field. Were there certain parts of the U.S. where India-born men were more likely to be viewed as either “Hindoo” (South Asian), versus “White”? What about for people marked “non-South Asian wife”?

Learn more