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  4. Preliminary Program
  5. Racism in the United States: Evidence from Economic History
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Racism in the United States: Evidence from Economic History

Paper Session

Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST)

Hosted By: American Economic Association
  • Chair: Morgan Williams Jr., Columbia University-Barnard College

Waves of Empowerment: Black Radio and the Civil Rights Movement

Tianyi Wang
,
Princeton University

Abstract

In the early 1960s, as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, Black-oriented radio stations were broadcasting across large swaths of the South. This paper uses newly digitized data to provide the first empirical evidence on the effects of Black radio on the civil rights movement. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in signal reception resulting from topographic factors, I find strong evidence that Black radio increased Black political participation and activism in the South during the early 1960s, as measured by Black voter registration and the presence of a local chapter of the NAACP. For mechanisms, I find evidence consistent with Black radio increasing the reach of civil rights groups and providing positive role models to African Americans. Moreover, results suggest that exposure to Black radio translated into substantive economic and political gains for the Black community in the form of greater state aid and legislative support for civil rights bills. Much of the effects of Black radio took place before the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation, highlighting the significance of Black radio to the Black community.

The Impact of Federal Housing Policies on Racial Inequality

Omer Ali
,
Duke University

Abstract

Racial discrimination in federal housing programs has attracted significant attention, and is often blamed for the large racial wealth gap in the US. Causal evidence for this link, however, has remained elusive. Using county-level data on the value of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) lending between 1935 and 1950, I estimate the impact of the mortgage guarantee program on racial gaps in homeownership, education, income and home values (when available). To measure the outcomes of interest, I leverage decennial census data at the county level between 1930 and 1970, when racial discrimination in mortgage lending was outlawed. To overcome endogeneity concerns, I use the distance between a county and the FHA regional office with jurisdiction over mortgage applications as an instrument. This novel instrument was constructed using jurisdictional maps obtained from the FHA archives.

White Southern Migrants and the Rise of the Modern Right in the U.S.

Andreas Ferrara
,
University of Pittsburgh

Abstract

The 20th century saw the migration of 19 million white Americans out of the postbellum South, bringing with them their political ideals and beliefs. We show that greater historical inflows of white Southern migrants in the early 20th century are associated with a more right-wing political ideology between 1940 and 2021. To identify the effect, we use a shift-share design based on past migration flows in 1900. Non-Southern areas that received more Southern-born whites as of 1940 tended to vote for the more conservative presidential candidates, had more anti-Black congressmen in the 1960s, and higher vote shares for President Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Their elected congressmen were also more likely to vote against key liberal bills such as the Civil Rights Acts, the Voting Rights Act, the Brady Handgun bill, or the 2021 Electoral College results certification. As mechanisms we show that the establishment of religious communities (Evangelical ones in particular) and the intergenerational transmission of political beliefs from Southern parents to their non-Southern offspring explain the long-run persistence in these political preferences and pattern. These results showcase how historical Southern institutions continue to matter for U.S. politics and culture, even outside the South, via the transmission of white Southern ideology.

Discrimination, Segregation, Integration and Expropriation

Geoffrey Fain Williams
,
Transylvania University

Abstract

Economists have modeled labor market discrimination since at least Becker (1957). To the degree that differences in outcomes across ethnic groups are modeled as coming from discrimination, economists have usually pointed to some combination of the mechanisms (a) discriminatory preferences about contact (of some combination of employers, co-workers and customers), (b) statistical discrimination, and (c) differential access to education and other resources for the development of human capital. In this paper I begin by looking at simple models of segregation and integration in a regional economy (county or commuting zone) using a standard Cobb-Douglas production function and show that white capital does better in integration and white labor does better in segregation. I suggest that depending on the details of local political economy white capital and labor can resolve this difference in interests by integrating some Black labor and expropriating some of the wages of these Black workers; I then develop a simple model of this. In the second part I introduce the third production factor of human capital, where the ethnic groups have different access to resources for human capital development. I show that this can lead, under certain assumptions, to outcomes very similar to the expropriation model. Both the model of expropriation and of limited human capital appear to match available data for some labor markets of the United States in the 1865-1965 period. I believe the exercise outlines a useful framework for thinking about racial discrimination in periods and regions where Blacks were disenfranchised.
JEL Classifications
  • N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy