The Persistence of Historical Racial Violence and Political Suppression: Implications for Contemporary Regional Inequality

• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Date: 01 March 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/00027162211016298
• Subject Matter: Intergenerational Effects

92 ANNALS, AAPSS, 694, March 2021

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211016298

The Persistence

of Historical

Racial Violence

and Political

Suppression:

Implications for

Contemporary

Regional

Inequality

By

JHACOVA A. WILLIAMS,

TREVON D. LOGAN,

and

BRADLEY L. HARDY

1016298ANN The Annals Of The American AcademyPersistence Of Racial Violence And Political Suppression

research-article2021

We provide evidence on the link between lynchings

and a range of political and economic outcomes for

Black Americans. We show that lynchings are related to

racial and political motives among whites that keep

Black Americans disconnected from the political pro-

cess. This political and racial gradient to lynchings is

related to public finance and redistribution within

states and localities and has potentially long-lasting

implications for investments in financial and human

capital for Black Americans. We also document regional

inequality in economic well-being and the social safety

net, linking the legacy of racialized violence and dimin-

ished political capital to persistently higher poverty and

lowered investments in social and labor market poli-

cies, showing that a key goal of Southern Redemption

policies and violence continues to play a role in Black

American life in the twenty-first century.

Keywords: racial violence; lynching; political partici-

pation; socioeconomic outcomes

Lynching, the extrajudicial murder of a per-

son or persons at the hands of a mob, is

commonly viewed as concurrent with the rise

of Jim Crow, the erosion of Black political and

economic gains from Reconstruction, and a

period of intense racial hostility. Recent histori-

cal scholarship by Loewen (2013); Jaspin

(2008); Hagen, Makovi, and Bearman (2013);

Beck, Tolnay, and Bailey (2016); Kantrowitz

(2012); Cook (2014); and Cook, Logan, and

Parman (2018) argues that lynching was only

one piece of a larger pattern of racial violence

in America in the late nineteenth century. This

includes the ethnic cleansing of entire counties

Jhacova A. Williams is an economist at the RAND cor-

poration. Prior to joining RAND, she served as an

economist at the Economic Policy Institute within the

Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.

Williams also previously served as an assistant profes-

sor at Clemson University and as a mathematics

instructor at Xavier University of Louisiana.

Correspondence: hardy@american.edu

PERSISTENCE OF RACIAL VIOLENCE AND POLITICAL SUPPRESSION 93

and the prohibition of Black residents in “sundown towns,” wherein Blacks found

to be present after dark would face violent acts. In this article, we show that racial

violence against Blacks has contributed to between- and within-region political

and economic inequality. Lynchings of Blacks lead to historical Black political

and policy-maker exclusion. And those historical initial conditions are strongly

associated today with diminished economic security. Such insecurity comes at a

cost to the broader society and includes starkly higher levels of modern-day pov-

erty and unemployment in the population.

The academic study of lynchings extends back to the efforts of Ida B. Wells,

the Chicago Tribune, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People), Tuskegee Institute, and others in the late nineteenth and twen-

tieth centuries who have documented lynchings and the conditions surrounding

them at the turn of the century (NAACP 1919; D. Williams 1968). Based on

these initial data collection efforts to describe the characteristics of lynching vic-

tims and lynch mobs, economic conflict-driven theories of lynching emerged.

Generally, lynching was viewed by scholars and the press as either a response to

economic frustration (Hovland and Sears 1940) or a deliberate attempt to

improve the economic position of whites relative to Blacks (Raper 1933). The

seminal work of Blalock (1967) emphasized conflict between groups as a response

to threats posed by the minority group to the majority group’s power and

resources.

With improved data on southern lynching victims, Beck and Tolnay explored

additional economic theories of lynching (Tolnay and Beck 1990, 1992b; see also

Cook 2012). Consistent with earlier work, they document a positive correlation

between Black population size and the incidence of lynchings; they also

demonstrate a higher prevalence of lynchings with declining cotton prices and

increased inflationary pressure, adding support for an economic theory of lynch-

ings. Lynchings, in this context, reduce competition from Black workers for white

jobs by eliminating migrant Black workers or intimidating Black market entrants.

More recently, Hagen, Makovi, and Bearman (2013) and Beck, Tolnay, and

Bailey (2016) argue that mob formation, as opposed to successful lynchings,

Trevon D. Logan is a professor of economics at the Ohio State University and a research asso-

ciate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His publications include “The National

Rise in Residential Segregation” (Journal of Economic History 2017), “Do Black Politicians

Matter? Evidence from Reconstruction” (Journal of Economic History 2020), and “Location

Matters: Historical Racial Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility” (Economics Letters

2017).

Bradley L. Hardy is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and

Policy at American University and nonresident senior fellow in Economic Studies at the

Brookings Institution. His publications include “Location Matters: Historical Racial Segregation

and Intergenerational Mobility” (Economics Letters 2017) and “The Evolution of Black

Neighborhoods since Kerner” (RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social

Sciences 2018).

NOTE: We thank Marcus D. Casey for helpful feedback, and we thank Ene Ikpebe for

valuable research assistance.