The economic functions of extrajudicial violence in the Jim Crow South

In this paper, we analyze the direct economic functions of White-on-Black violence in the Jim Crow South. As we will see, White-on-Black violence was used to control Black labor and to seize gains made by Black agriculturalists. We find that White-on-Black lynchings during the pre-harvest period were used by White landlords to increase the total amount of man-hours expended by Black sharecroppers. We also find that the occurrence of one or more White-on-Black lynchings in a given county is associated with a 1.9 percent decrease in Black landownership in the same county in each of the three years following said lynching, and we find that the 1912 Forsyth Massacre and the 1906 Atlanta Massacre had even larger effects. Given the high frequency of White-on-Black violence in the Jim Crow South, the impact on Black labor and the cumulative effect on Black landownership and town and city property were huge.

Duke Scholars

Author William A. Darity Jr. Sanford School of Public Policy