Abstract
The US South maintained a distinctive economic and political structure from the demise of slavery in the 1860s to the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s. Racial wage differentials in the unskilled labour market were small. But blacks were virtually absent from higher-paying skilled jobs. Disfranchisement led to a drastic fall in relative expenditures on black schooling between 1890 and 1910. The effort to protect cheap labour reinforced regional isolation, depriving the South of dynamic stimulus from new migrants, enterprise and ideas. Conflicts between recruitment of capital and demands for racial justice were resolved only by federal intervention.
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Wright, G. (2018). Jim Crow South. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2009
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2009
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