The influence of racial histories on economic development strategies

Abstract

For more than a century, white communities across the United States employed strategies to remain all-white, including violent acts, forcibly driving minorities out of town, and local ordinances. One particularly widespread and effective approach used by many towns to exclude certain groups of people from living in their towns was the creation of a ‘sundown town’. This paper seeks to examine the association between past sundown policies and one component of community life that many towns currently struggle with: economic development. By examining the racial histories and economic development activities of 428 towns in the Midwest and nontraditional South, the study examines whether historical legacy can carry over to the present and affect economic development. Findings suggest that former sundown towns currently pursue fewer economic development activities than towns that have a history of being inclusive, even after controlling for a community's assets.

Keywords:

• Community
• entrepreneurship
• racism
• rural ethnic diversity
• social capital
• cultural capital

Notes

1. In 2010, the percentage of all US residents who identify as African American was 12.6, while the percentage of residents in the eight states in the study who are African American ranged from a high of 14.5 in Illinois to a low of 2.9 in Iowa. The average percentage of residents of former sundown towns who identify as black or African American ranged from a high of .44 in Illinois to a low of .29 in Wisconsin, while the average percentage of residents of towns that did not go sundown (included in this study) who identify as black or African American ranged from a high of 14.2 in Michigan to a low of 3.0 in both Iowa and Indiana. Thus the average percentage of residents of former sundown towns who identify as black or African American is much lower than non-sundown town, state, and national averages.

2. According to Loewen's (2005) extensive research on locating sundown towns in the United States, sundown towns are most common in the Midwest and non-traditional South but rare in the traditional South (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana – all states historically dominated by slavery). Thus for the purposes of studying the relationship between a town's racial history and its recent economic development practices, the current study's sample of towns are from the Midwest and non-traditional South.

3. Loewen (2005) explains in great detail how most all-white towns in the Midwest and non-traditional South by the mid twentieth century (when sundown towns were at their maximum) were all-white on purpose (hence sundown). From a sample of 146 of the 424 all-white towns in Illinois with more than 1,000 residents in 1970, Loewen was able to confirm 145 (99.5 per cent) to have racial policies excluding blacks from living in the town. Extrapolating to the remaining all-white towns in Illinois, one can be 99 per cent confident that the true number of sundown towns from the remaining 278 all-white towns is between 261 and 278. In other words, one can be 99 per cent confident that between 96 per cent and 99.8 per cent of all the all-white towns in Illinois in 1970 were sundown towns. Since all towns in the current study's sample are located in the Midwest and non-traditional South (the regions of the United States where sundown towns were most common), it isn't much of a leap to be confident that a similarly high percent of all-white towns were white on purpose.

4. While it is possible that some black families voluntarily left small towns for urban areas, the likelihood of the entire black population voluntarily leaving a town while the white population chose to stay is extremely small. In a hypothetical example of a town of 1,000, with 100 black residents, 900 white residents, and 200 residents moving from the town over a ten year period, the probability of a given black resident moving from the town is .02 or 2 per cent (.1 * .2=.02). This expected probability is much smaller than the actual probability of 100 per cent if the actual number of black residents leaving during the ten years was 100. Since the expected probability and actual probability are not equal, the two events (being black and moving from the town) are not independent. This indicates that black families were either indirectly or directly forced to move out of town.

5. Of eight present-day all-white (or nearly all-white) towns that I personally visited in the summer of 2009, I was able to confirm all eight to have had policies excluding African Americans from living in the town. I was able to locate newspaper articles detailing the expulsion of African Americans (who were at the time living in the towns) from the city limits for four of the eight towns. Locating newspaper articles on expulsions is both tedious and time consuming as microfilm can be faded or missing, newspapers at the time were not well organized, and write-ups of expulsions were small and often located in the middle of the paper. Thus it is easy to miss articles of sundown town expulsions.

6. All of the present-day all-white (or nearly all-white) towns in the study's sample are included in Loewen's database of sundown towns. While he has run statistical tests confirming that nearly all of the all-white towns in the Midwest and non-traditional South had racial policies excluding blacks from living in the towns, it is illegal to have such policies today. However, the lack of a significant number of African American residents (< 1 per cent) in these sundown towns suggests that many residents want to keep the town mostly if not all-white. To test this hypothesis, a question was included in the survey that asked how receptive residents would be to an employer locating to the community if the employer: 1) employed a large number of local residents; and 2) attracted a large number of African Americans and/or Latinos to the community. The sundown towns were significantly less receptive to the idea than were towns that have consistently had an African American population.

7. Cultural capital is the least tangible of a community's capitals. For Bourdieu (1986), cultural capital is found in three states: embodied, institutionalized, and objectified. While attitudes about other races and ethnicities passed through legacy can be conceptualized as the embodied state of cultural capital, the measures I use here are reflective of the objectified state of culture which includes cultural goods, such as material goods, as well as councils, foundations, and other mechanisms that produce or celebrate material objects.