Homefront: Black Veterans and Black Voters in the Civil Rights Era
AEA Papers and Proceedings
vol. 111,
May 2021
(pp. 32-36)
Abstract
While the role of World War II veterans in the civil rights movement has been well documented, debate about the causal effect of military service remains. Combining detailed information on World War II enlistments and Civil Rights Commission data on voter registration, we present the first causal estimates of the role of Black veterans in high-risk political participation in the US South. Each Black enlistee increased Black voter registration by more than two additional Black registrants after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We find similar effects on the presence of Black rights groups and, in response, White nationalist organizations.Citation
Koch, Thomas, Trevon D. Logan, and John M. Parman. 2021. "Homefront: Black Veterans and Black Voters in the Civil Rights Era." AEA Papers and Proceedings, 111: 32-36. DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20211070Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
- J45 Public Sector Labor Markets
- K38 Human Rights Law; Gender Law
- N42 Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: U.S.; Canada: 1913-
- K16 Election Law