I believe it was African American Men.
The land west of Mississippi during the 1700's and most of the 1800' was land that was still dominated by the Native American tribes and the Spanish, and it was not safe at all for people to move in those parts considering the very bad relations with the native populations in that time of period. Also, the authorities, still hadn't tried to motivate people and try to make them settle in those areas with some measure that was going to be attractive for them.
Czar Nicholas II was executed by Bolshevik forces in July of 1918. The Bolsheviks were committed to the ideas of Karl Marx, and they believed that the working classes would free themselves from the economic and political control of the ruling class. They wanted to form a socialist society based on equality. The provisional government was never elected, and it chose to remain in World War I, despite the fact that the country was ill-equipped to fight against Germany. This made people more in favor of the revolution.
Putting over 12,000 already weak men together in a ramshackle camp with little food was a recipe for disaster from the start.
The men subsisted on a concoction called “firecake”–flour and water mixed together and baked in iron kettles.
The war of 1914-1918 (WWI) resulted, in France by a loss of approximately 2,850,000 inhabitants including 1,350,000 deaths of soldiers.
Those soldiers in 1914 were over 20 years old and would have been over 55 in 1950; this explains the disparity between the male and female population in 55 to 70 years old age in France in 1950.
i hope this helped <3
