According to the 1940 Census there were no Latinos

The 1940 census was officially released today. (Photo/Getty Images)

While you might have listed yourself as “Puerto Rican,” or “Mexican,” or “Hispanic,” in the 2010 census, this is not how you are going to find your bisabuela or your abuela if she was in the U.S. and counted in the newly released records of the 1940 census.

“The terms "Hispanic” or “Latino” were not used then,“ says Mark Hugo López, of the Pew Hispanic Center. It was not until the 1970 census that Hispanics could identify themselves as such.

"Even in the last few census counts, the "boxes” used to identify ethnicity have been changing from census to census,“ López adds.

D'Vera Cohn, an expert on demography at Pew Research, explains that up until 1960, it was the enumerator who went house to house who would ultimately write down what "race” you were, and there was no category for Hispanic. In the 1930, census, there was a one-time race category for “Mexican,” but it was not present in 1940.

In the newly released 1940 records, 89.8 percent of the population was listed as “white,” and 9.8 percent were listed as “black.” There was no “Hispanic” category.

So how would Latinos have been categorized then? "It all depended on what the enumerator put,“ Cohn explains.

There is one thing you might be able to find about your bisabuelito or your tía abuela, however - the 1940 census was the first to use the new science of "sample surveys” to ask every 20th person more detailed questions. This was right after the Depression, and the government was trying to get more information about families’ incomes, housing patterns, etc.

“The sample questions included place of birth of the person’s mother and father; “mother tongue” in the household during early childhood; three questions about military service and veteran or veteran-family status; three questions about Social Security receipt; and questions about occupation, industry and class of worker,” says Cohn in her blog about the 1940 census.

Some interesting tidbits from the 1940 release: the most common occupations included rivet heater, frame spinner, salesman and music teacher. Among the more common places of work were cotton mill, farm and shipyard.

So if you are a genealogy buff and have a little time on your hands, you can go to the 1940 census data available and see if you find a relative there.

SANDRA LILLEY, NBC LATINO STAFF

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