Black Out-Migration and Southern Political Realignment

Leah  Boustan; Marco  Tabellini

Working Paper | 2018

Black Out-Migration and Southern Political Realignment

Abstract

Can emigration from less democratic and economically less developed areas induce political and economic change? We study this question in the context of the second Great Migration of African Americans (1940–1970), when more than 4 million blacks left the U.S. South and moved to the urban North. To deal with the endogeneity of black emigration, we construct a “reversed” shift-share instrument which predicts black outflows by interacting pre-determined shares of blacks born in southern counties and living in the North with observed migration flows into northern areas. Using this empirical strategy and relying on a variety of datasets assembled and digitized from historical archives, we find that black emigration reduced support for segregationist candidates in Presidential and in Democratic primary elections, and increased the share of county resources devoted to black schools. Our interpretation is that black emigration was economically costly for the white elites who reacted by making political concessions to limit the outflow of African Americans. Consistent with the idea that black departures increased labor costs in agriculture, we find that the Great Migration reduced the prevalence of tenancy and lead to farm consolidation. We conclude by documenting that the effects of black emigration on mechanization and on farm value were highly heterogeneous, and depended crucially on initial farm size.

Keywords: Great Migration; Immigration; Race; Government and Politics; Economics; United States;

Language: English

Format: Print

Citation:

Boustan, Leah, and Marco Tabellini. "Black Out-Migration and Southern Political Realignment." Working Paper, 2018. (Preliminary Draft Available Upon Request.)

How are boundaries of in-groups and out-groups in a society formed, and how do they evolve? Does the appearance of a new out-group foster or hinder the incorporation of previously excluded groups? We address these issues in the context of immigration to the US between 1965 and 2010, and study how new immigrants from China and Mexico affected native whites’ attitudes towards blacks and their social integration. Using an instrumental variables strategy that leverages exogenous variation in the arrival of immigrants to different states combined with survey and census data, we find that immigration reduces whites’ prejudice toward African Americans, and raises black-white intermarriage rates. These effects are driven by Mexican – but not by Chinese – immigrants, consistent with a mechanism in which the arrival of a more socially distant group narrows the distance between the majority and existing minorities. Our study provides an under-appreciated glimpse into the evolution of social status in multi-ethnic societies.

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

Legislators' Response to Changes in the Electorate: The Great Migration and Civil Rights

Alvaro Calderon, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

Between 1940 and 1970, during the second Great Migration, more than four million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States. In this period, blacks were often excluded from the political process in the South but were eligible to vote in the North. We study if, by changing the composition and the preferences of the northern electorate, the Great Migration increased demand for racial equality and induced legislators to more actively promote civil rights legislation. We predict black inflows by interacting historical settlements of southern born blacks across northern counties with the differential rate of black emigration from different southern states after 1940. We find that black in-migration increased the Democratic vote share and encouraged grass-roots activism. In turn, Congress members representing areas more exposed to black inflows became increasingly supportive of civil rights. They were not only more likely to vote in favor of pro-civil rights bills, but also more willing to take direct actions, such as signing discharge petitions, to promote racial equality. Investigating the mechanisms, we document that both “between” and “within” party changes contributed to the shift in the position of northern legislators on civil rights. Taken together, our findings suggest that the Great Migration played an important role in the development and success of the civil rights movement.

Keywords: Great Migration; civil rights; Demographics; Race; Rights; Government Legislation;

Citation:

Calderon, Alvaro, Vasiliki Fouka, and Marco Tabellini. "Legislators' Response to Changes in the Electorate: The Great Migration and Civil Rights." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-017, August 2019. (Revised September 2019.) View Details

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Black Out-Migration and Southern Political Realignment

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