- 67On June 22, 1970, President Nixon signed into law H.R. 4249, lowering the voting age requirement to 18 starting on January 1, 1971. (2014) and use a linear interpolation to obtain information on each intercensal year from 1950 onwards.
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- 73For more details on newspapers data, see Fouka et al. (2022) and Calderon et al. (2023). 74See Table B4 for a description of the variables included in each measure. 75This definition excludes all the events that occurred inside of school settings and civil rights demonstrations.
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- 77Hate crimes are defined as “criminal offenses that are motivated, in whole or in part, by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity” (FBI Report, 2015). 78Note that, since not all hate crimes committed by whites against Black American victims include the race of the perpetrator, this measure will be an under-estimate of the number of hate crimes with a white perpetrator against African Americans.
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- 82In the main analysis, we impute 1984 registration data when 1980 ones are missing. See Appendix B.1 and Table B1. 83This could only be performed for four states: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
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- 84The bin scatterplots are computed using a least squares estimation with robust inference procedure, following Cattaneo et al. (2022). 85The common support includes the set of counties with a Black population share below 68.9%. 86Outliers are constructed separately for Black (Panel A) and white (Panel B) voters.
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- Additional political variables. In addition to data on registration rates and Black elected officials described, respectively, in Appendix B.1 and B.2, we use several sources to measure the political environment across southern counties. First, we collect data on the 1940 and 1960 Republican vote shares in presidential elections from Clubb et al. (2006).
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- Alt, J. E. (1994). The Impact of the Voting Rights Act on Black and White Voter Registration in the South. In C. Davidson and B. Grofman (Eds.), Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990, pp. 351–377. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
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- Aneja, A. P. and C. F. Avenancio-Leon (2019). The Effect of Political Power on Labor Market Inequality: Evidence from the 1965 Voting Rights Act. mimeo.
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Ang, D. (2019). Do 40-Year-Old Facts Still Matter? Long-Run Effects of Federal Oversight under the Voting Rights Act. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 11(3), 1–53.
- Archive of the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project (VEP), the United States Commission on Civil Rights (1959, 1961) and Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (1992) Main Regressors Black population share Number of Black Americans over county population in 1960. County and City Data Book Consolidated File, County Data 1947-1977 (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2012) Coverage (VRA) Dummy variable equal to one for the counties that were covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and zero otherwise.
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- Authors’ calculations from Cook et al. (2023) Goldwater Log of the vote shares of Republican candidates Dwight D. Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater in the 1952 and 1964 presidential elections.
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- Authors’ calculations from Gregory (2018) Net migration rate Net Black migration rate between 1940 and 1960. County and City Data Book Consolidated File, County Data 1947-1977 (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2012) Presidential turnout Log of the number of votes cast in the 1940 and 1960 presidential elections divided by voting age population.
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- Authors’ calculations from Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (1999) and Bartley and Graham (2006) KKK Number of Ku Klux Klan klaverns, divided by the white population, between 1915 and 1966.
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- Authors’ calculations from Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (2013) Governor turnout Log of votes cast in the 1940 and 1960 gubernatorial elections divided by voting age population.
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- Authors’ calculations from Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (2013) Race Riots Number of Race Riots between 1964 and 1971. Authors’ calculations from Carter (1986) Republican vote share Log of vote shares of Republican candidates in the 1940 and 1960 presidential elections.
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- Authors’ calculations from Manson et al. (2022) White characteristics Unemployment rate defined as the number of unemployed divided by the labor force; poverty rate as the share of families below 3,000 USD (resp., 7,500 USD) in 1960 (resp., 1980); share of the population above 25 years of age with less than a high school diploma.
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- Authors’ calculations from Ramey and McWilliams (2017) Measures of segregation Residential Segregation Index, Dissimilarity Index, Isolation Index. See Logan and Parman (2017) for more details.
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- Authors’ calculations from the Census of Governments (1957) and the NRBEO (1980) Control Variables Cotton share Share of land devoted to cotton production in 1959 and 1955. Authors’ calculations from the United States Census of Agriculture (Haines et al., 2018) and Haines (2010) Families below poverty line Share of families with income below 3,000 U.S. dollars in 1960. County and City Data Book Consolidated File, County Data 1947-1977 (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2012) Green Book establishments Number of all Green Book establishments present in 1955 (standardized by the Black population in 1950).
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- Authors’ calculations from the Census of Population, 1960 Ethnic conflicts and protests Violent conflicts include spontaneous disruptions, boycotts, riots, and ethnic vandalism between 1960 and 1980. Non-violent conflicts include meetings or rallies, and picketing between 1960 and 1980. Pro- and anti-Black protests are recorded between 1960 and 1980.
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- Authors’ calculations from the National Roster of Black Elected Officials and the Census of Governments Hate crime rates Average number of hate crimes against a target group between 2000 and 2018, divided by the population of the corresponding group in 2000. A similar measure is constructed for hate crimes against African American victims with a white perpetrator.
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- Authors’ calculations from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2016) Newspapers’ mentions Frequency of selected terms, scaled by the frequency of the word “and,” in local newspapers in each southern county and each year from 1960 to 1980.
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- Authors’ calculations from: i) for the 1915-1940 period, the Virginia Commonwealth University’s project “Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan” (Kneebone and Torres, 2015); and ii) for the 1964-1966 period, “The Present-Day Ku Klux Klan Movement: Report by the Committee on Un-American Activities” (House of Representatives, 1967) Lynching Number of lynchings against Black Americans, divided by the Black population, from 1930 to 1964.
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- Authors’ calculations using information available from the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice Single member districts (SMD) Indicator equal to one for covered states where members of county governing bodies are elected by single member districts and zero otherwise. See also Bernini et al. (2023) for more details.
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- b Microfilms from the “Arkansas Elected Justices of the Peace Returns.” c Until 1973.
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- Bartley, N. V. and H. D. Graham (2006). Southern Primary and General Election Data, 1946-1972. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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Bayer, P. and K. K. Charles (2018). Divergent Paths: A New Perspective on Earnings Differences Between Black and White Men Since 1940. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133(3), 1459–1501.
- Bazzi, S., A. Ferrara, M. Fiszbein, T. Pearson, and P. Testa (2023). The Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming.
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Bazzi, S., A. Gaduh, A. D. Rothenberg, and M. Wong (2019). Unity in Diversity? How Intergroup Contact can Foster Nation Building. American Economic Review 109(11), 3978–4025.
Beaman, L., R. Chattopadhyay, E. Duflo, R. Pande, and P. Topalova (2009). Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(4), 1497–1540.
Bernini, A. (2023). The Voice of Radio in the Battle for Equal Rights: Evidence From the U.S. South. Economics & Politics 35(1), 163–226.
Bernini, A., G. Facchini, and C. Testa (2023). Race, Representation and Local Governments in the US South: The Effect of the Voting Rights Act. Journal of Political Economy 131(4), 994–1056.
- Besides electoral outcomes, we consider additional variables. First, our main treatment variable (a dummy equal to one if a county was subject to the special provisions of the VRA) is defined using information from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.70 Second, we collect data on electoral rules from the Census of Governments, Elective Offices of State and Local Governments (1957) and from the 1980 volume of the NRBEO. Finally, we collect data from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the U.S. District Courts to map counties to the judicial districts and their corresponding judicial divisions.
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Boisjoly, J., G. J. Duncan, M. Kremer, D. M. Levy, and J. Eccles (2006). Empathy or Antipathy? The Impact of Diversity. American Economic Review 96(5), 1890–1905.
- Boustan, L. P. (2010). Was Postwar Suburbanization “White Flight”? Evidence from the Black Migration. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 125(1), 417–443.
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- Brückmann, R. (2019). Citizens’ Councils, Conservatism and White Supremacy in Louisiana, 1964-1972. European Journal of American Studies 14(1).
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Bursztyn, L., T. Chaney, T. A. Hassan, and A. Rao (2022). The Immigrant Next Door: Exposure, Prejudice, and Altruism. University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper 2021-16.
Calderon, A., V. Fouka, and M. Tabellini (2023). Racial Diversity and Racial Policy Preferences: The Great Migration and Civil Rights. The Review of Economic Studies 90(1), 165–200.
- Carter, G. L. (1986). The 1960s Black Riots Revisited: City Level Explanations of Their Severity. Sociological Inquiry 56(2), 210–228.
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Cascio, E. U. and E. Washington (2014). Valuing the Vote: The Redistribution of Voting Rights and State Funds Following the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(1), 376–433.
- Cattaneo, M. D., R. K. Crump, M. H. Farrell, and Y. Feng (2022). On Binscatter. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports 881.
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Chetty, R., N. Hendren, M. R. Jones, and S. R. Porter (2020). Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 135(2), 711–783.
- Clubb, J. M., W. H. Flanigan, and N. H. Zingale (2006). Electoral Data for Counties in the United States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840-1972. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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Coate, S. and M. Conlin (2004). A Group Rule: Utilitarian Approach to Voter Turnout: Theory and Evidence. American Economic Review 94(5), 1476–1504.
- Conflicts data from Olzak (2015) and protests data from the Dynamics of Collective Action Dataset (Olzak et al., 2011) Green Book establishments (other) Average number of all Green Book establishments between 1939 and 1955; and the growth rate of all Green Book establishments between 1939 and 1955.
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Conley, T. G. (1999). GMM Estimation with Cross Sectional Dependence. Journal of Econometrics 92(1), 1–45.
Cook, L. D., M. E. C. Jones, T. D. Logan, and D. Rosé (2023). The Evolution of Access to Public Accommodations in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 138(1), 37–102.
- David and Eisenberg (1961) State Senate Number of seats per person in the county, divided by the figure for the state overall, in 1950 and 1960.
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- David and Eisenberg (1961) Urban Share of urban population in 1960. County and City Data Book Consolidated File, County Data 1947-1977 (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2012) U.S. military enlistment during WWII Total number of Black draftees and volunteers (per 100,000 individuals) divided by the eligible Black population in the county as of 1940 (14-45 years old).
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- David, P. T. and R. Eisenberg (1961). Devaluation of the Urban and Suburban Vote: A Statistical Investigation of Long-Term Trends in State Legislative Representation: Volume II. Charlottesville, VA: Bureau of Public Administration, University of Virginia.
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- Davidson, C. and B. Grofman (1994). Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
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Derenoncourt, E. (2022). Can You Move to Opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration. American Economic Review 112(2), 369–408.
Derenoncourt, E. and C. Montialoux (2021). Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 136(1), 169–228.
- Derenoncourt, E., C. H. Kim, M. Kuhn, and M. Schularick (2022). Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020. National Bureau of Economic Research No. w30101.
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- Dewan, T. and S. Wolton (2022). A Political Economy of Social Discrimination. CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP17291.
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- Doty, R. W. (1969). The Texas Voter Registration Law and the Due Process Clause. Houston Law Review 7(2), 163–215.
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- Exploiting the fact that the data records the race of the victim, we define hate crimes against: African Americans, non-Black minorities, and whites. In 65% of the cases, the data also report the race of the perpetrator. We use this piece of information to count the number of hate crimes committed by a white perpetrator against a Black American victim (almost 90% of the hate crimes against Black Americans for which the race of the perpetrator is reported have a white offender).78 For each of the four variables, we derive the average number of hate crimes over the 2000-2018 period; then, we scale it by the corresponding population at baseline to obtain a measure of average hate crime rates, which is used as outcome in our analysis.
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Facchini, G., B. G. Knight, and C. Testa (2020). The Franchise, Policing, and Race: Evidence from Arrests Data and the Voting Rights Act. National Bureau of Economic Research No. w27463.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (2016). Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data: Hate Crime Data. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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Feigenbaum, J. J., S. Mazumder, and C. B. Smith (2020). When Coercive Economies Fail: The Political Economy of the US South After the Boll Weevil. National Bureau of Economic Research No. w27161.
- Figure 1. Registration rates: Trends in the gradient A. (ln) Black registration -0.040 -0.020 0.000 0.020 0.040 (ln) registration rate 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 Covered Not Covered B. (ln) white registration -0.010 -0.005 0.000 0.005 0.010 (ln) registration rate 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 Covered Not Covered Notes: The figures plot the coefficient on the interaction between the VRA indicator and the 1960 Black population share, separately by year and treatment status, in models that also include: county and state fixed effects; and interactions between the VRA indicator and the vector of controls. Controls are: Unemployment rate (%), 1960; Families below poverty line (%), 1960; Rural farms (%), 1960; Land devoted to harvested cotton (%), 1959. Regressions are weighed by 1960 population, and robust standard errors are adjusted for clustering by judicial divisions.
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- Figure 2. Registration rates: Difference in the gradient -0.03 -0.02 -0.01 0.00 0.01 0.02 0.03 (ln) registration rate 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 Black voter registration White voter registration Notes: The figure plots the coefficient (with corresponding 95% confidence intervals) on the interaction between the VRA indicator, year dummies, and the 1960 Black population share in models that also include: county and state by year fixed effects; and interactions between year dummies, the VRA indicator, and the vector of controls. Controls are: Unemployment rate (%), 1960; Families below poverty line (%), 1960; Rural farms (%), 1960; Land devoted to harvested cotton (%), 1959.
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- Figure A3. Discontinuity around the 50% turnout rate A. Change in (ln) Black registration, 1980-1960 400 450 500 550 600 650 Number of counties (observations) 0.000 0.010 0.020 0.030 0.040 Long-differences estimate 10 20 30 40 50 Bandwidth on each side of the 50% presidential turnout rate in 1964 B. Change in (ln) white registration, 1980-1960 450 500 550 600 650 700 Number of counties (observations) 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.010 Long-differences estimate 10 20 30 40 50 Bandwidth on each side of the 50% presidential turnout rate in 1964 Notes: The figures plot the coefficient and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals in solid and dashed lines, respectively.
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- Finally, in columns (4), (5), and (6), we show that results are robust to defining the dependent variable as: i) registration rates (i.e., without the log); ii) the log of (1+rates); iii) the log of registered voters (i.e., without scaling the number of registered voters by the eligible population). Coefficients in column (4) indicate that a 10 percentage points increase in the 1960 Black population share in covered (relative to non-covered) counties increases Black and white registration rates by 3.6 and 3.3 percentage points, respectively. Coefficients in column (6) suggest that a 10 percentage points increase in the Black population share increases the number of Black and white registered voters by 25% and 8%, respectively.
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- Finally, since the Black population share is substantially larger in covered than in noncovered counties (see also Table A1), in column (4), we replicate results by trimming the sample on the common support defined by the share of African Americans in 1960. Reassuringly, in all cases, results are in line with those obtained from the baseline specification reported in column (4) of Table 1.
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Fouka, V., S. Mazumder, and M. Tabellini (2022). From Immigrants to Americans: Race and Assimilation During the Great Migration. The Review of Economic Studies 89(2), 811–842.
- Fourth, we use data from David and Eisenberg (1961) to calculate the number of seats per person in the State Senate and House of the county, relative to those in the state, in 1950 and 1960.
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- Fresh, A. (2018). The Effect of the Voting Rights Act on Enfranchisement: Evidence from North Carolina. The Journal of Politics 80(2), 713–718.
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- From the same source, augmented with Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (2013), we obtain data on: i) voter turnout in presidential elections of 1960 and 1940; and, ii) the vote shares of Barry Goldwater and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1964 and 1952 presidential elections. Second, using data from Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (1999), Bartley and Graham (2006), and Manson et al. (2022), we calculate voter turnout in gubernatorial elections for 1940 and 1960 as the ratio between votes cast and voting age population.69 Third, we take the vote shares received by the lead candidates in the Democratic primaries of 1940 and 1960 from Bartley and Graham (2006).
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- Fullerton, A. S. and M. J. Stern (2010). Explaining the Persistence and Eventual Decline of the Gender Gap in Voter Registration and Turnout in the American South, 1956-1980. Social Science History 34(2), 129–169.
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Gentzkow, M. and J. Shapiro (2010). What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers. Econometrica 78(1), 35–71.
Glaeser, E. L., G. A. M. Ponzetto, and J. M. Shapiro (2005). Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(4), 1283–1330.
- Gregory, J. N. (2018). Mapping American Social Movements. Seattle, WA: University of Washington.
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- Grossman, G. and S. Zonszein (2021). Voted In, Standing Out: Public Response to Immigrants ’ Political Accession. OSF Preprints. September 19.
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- Guglielmo, R. A. (2018). A Martial Freedom Movement: Black G.I.s’ Political Struggles During World War II. Journal of American History 104(4), 879–903.
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- Haines, M. (2010). Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790-2002. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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- Haines, M., P. Fishback, and P. Rhode (2018). United States Agriculture Data, 1840-2012. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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- Hate crimes. We examine the long-run impact of the VRA on whites’ racial attitudes using hate crime data compiled by the FBI as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, and distributed by Federal Bureau of Investigation (2016).77 We match incidents to southern counties, based on the location of the reporting agency, as provided by the Originating Agency Identifier (ORI), restricting the sample by dropping counties for which an agency did not report any hate crime for all years within a 5-year interval. The data is available from 1991 to 2018. However, as in Calderon et al. (2023), we focus on hate crimes reported from 2000 (included) onward, since the number of agencies collecting records grew during the 1990s, stabilizing only toward the end of the decade. This implies that, until the late-1990s, the quality and the comparability of the data is rather low.
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- Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Volume 25. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Hornbeck, R. and S. Naidu (2014). When the Levee Breaks: Black Migration and Economic Development in the American South. American Economic Review 104(3), 963–990.
- House of Representatives (1967). The Present-Day Ku Klux Klan Movement: Report by the Committee on Un-American Activities. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
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Iacus, S. M., G. King, and G. Porro (2012). Causal Inference Without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching. Political Analysis 20(1), 1–24.
- In column (3), we instead consider the Black draft enlistment rate during World War II, which is viewed as a potential force behind the rise of the civil rights movement (Guglielmo, 2018). Then, in column (4), we interact the coverage dummy with the 1940 to 1960 Black out-migration rate – another variable that has been associated with political change in the U.S. South (Margo, 1991; Feigenbaum et al., 2020). Finally, in column (5), we include the interaction between the VRA indicator and two index of historical economic and noneconomic discrimination from Qian and Tabellini (2021).
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- In column (4), we exclude the four southern states (Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia) that do not report registration values for the year 1980.82 In column (5), we define the dependent variable as the change between the average value of 1976-1980 and the average value of 1960-1964.83 In column (6), we omit from the set of controls the share of rural farms and the land in the county devoted to cotton production. Finally, in column (7), we include the Republican vote share in the 1964 presidential election. This is because we observe a slight pre-trend in the border sample of Table 2 (Panel B). Once again, results always remain in line with those from our baseline specification.
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- In Table C4, we verify that results are robust to controlling for several other measures related to the degree of (pre-VRA) segregation. In column (1), we restate the baseline specification, controlling for the interaction between the VRA indicator and the number of all Green Book establishments present in 1955 (the last data point in the Green Book dataset), standardized by the Black population in 1950. Next, in columns (2) and (3), we interact the VRA indicator with the average number of Green Book establishments and with their growth rate, between 1939 and 1955 (the first and the last year in the Green Book dataset). Then, in columns (4) to (6), we turn to three measures of racial residential segregation taken from Logan and Parman (2017). In particular, we interact the VRA indicator with, respectively: the Residential Segregation Index, the Dissimilarity Index, and the Isolation Index. Reassuringly, in all cases, results remain in line with those from our preferred specification.
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- In Table C5, we show that results are robust to considering additional variables. In column (1), we restate the preferred specification. Next, in column (2), we include the interaction between the VRA indicator and the presence of local NAACP chapters in 1964.
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- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (1992). Voter Registration in the United States, 1968-1988. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (1999). United States Historical Election Returns, 1824-1968. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (2012). County and City Data Book [United States], Consolidated File: County Data, 1947-1977. Ann Arbor, MI: Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (2013). General Election Data for the United States, 1950-1990. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
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- James, D. S. (1987). Voter Registration: A Restriction on the Fundamental Right to Vote.
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- Jardina, A. (2019). White Identity Politics. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.
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- Johnson, L. B. (1965). We Shall Overcome. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Speech to Congress on Voting Rights, March 15, 1965. archives.gov/legislative/features/ voting-rights-1965/johnson.
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- Keyssar, A. (2009). The Right to Vote. New York, N.Y.: Basic Books.
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- Kneebone, J. T. and S. D. Torres (2015). Data to Support the ‘Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1919-1940’ Project. Richmond, VA: Virginia Commonwealth University.
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- Kousser, M. (1992). The Voting Rights Act and the Two Reconstructions. In C. Davidson and B. Grofman (Eds.), Controversies in Minority Voting: A Twenty-Five Year Perspective on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, pp. 135–176. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.
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Kuziemko, I. and E. Washington (2018). Why Did the Democrats Lose the South? Bringing New Data to an Old Debate. American Economic Review 108(10), 2830–2867.
Lacroix, J. (2023). Ballots Instead of Bullets? The Effect of the Voting Rights Act on Political Violence. Journal of the European Economic Association 21(2), 764–813.
- Lawson, S. F. (1976). Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press.
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- Logan and Parman (2017) NAACP Number of local branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1942 and 1964, scaled by the 1940 and 1960 Black population.
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Logan, T. D. and J. M. Parman (2017). The National Rise in Residential Segregation. The Journal of Economic History 77(1), 127–170.
Lowe, M. (2021). Types of Contact: A Field Experiment on Collaborative and Adversarial Caste Integration. American Economic Review 111(6), 1807–1844.
- Manson, S., J. Schroeder, D. Van Riper, T. Kugler, and S. Ruggles (2022). IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS.
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Margo, R. A. (1991). Segregated Schools and the Mobility Hypothesis: A Model of Local Government Discrimination. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 106(1), 61–73.
- Martin, B. L. (1991). From Negro to Black to African American: The Power of Names and Naming. Political Science Quarterly 106(1), 83–107.
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- McDonald, L. (2003). A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.
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- Mickey, R. (2015). Paths Out of Dixie. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
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- Most records originate from reports of the Secretary of State, the Board of Registrations, the Auditor of State, and the Election Commissioner. In some instances, we retrieved data from the U.S. Justice Department and surveys of local governments carried out by the Southern Regional Council. We complemented these records with additional information from the United States Commission on Civil Rights (1959, 1961). After digitizing these records, we combined them with total registration data from Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (1992) to obtain a county-level panel dataset on the number of registered voters (total and by race) for the period between 1956 and 1980.
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Murphy, K. M. and A. Shleifer (2004). Persuasion in Politics. American Economic Review 94(2), 435–439.
- Newspapers.com Voter registration rates Log of registered voters divided by voting age population, total and by race, between 1956 and 1980 (see also Appendix B.1).
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Ottinger, S. and M. Posch (2022). The Political Economy of Propaganda: Evidence from US Newspapers. IZA Discussion Paper No. 15078.
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Qian, N. and M. Tabellini (2021). Discrimination and State Capacity: Evidence from WWII US Army Enlistment. National Bureau of Economic Research No. w29482.
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- Reassuringly, the coefficient on the interaction between the VRA indicator and the 1960 Black population share remains stable and close to that from our preferred specification.
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- Reed, R. (1966). Democrats Scrap Alabama Slogan in Bid to Negroes. The New York Times, January 23, 1966.
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- Regressions also include interactions between county controls and the coverage (VRA) dummy. Controls are: Low-skilled (%), 1960; Unemployment rate (%), 1960; Families below poverty line (%), 1960; Rural farms (%), 1960; Land devoted to harvested cotton (%), 1959; Pro-Black protest, 1960-64; Anti-Black protest, 1960-64; Green Book establishments, 1955.
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- Regressions are weighed by 1960 population, and robust standard errors are adjusted for clustering by judicial divisions.
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- Regressions are weighed by 1960 population, and robust standard errors in parenthesis are adjusted for clustering by judicial divisions. ***, **, and * indicate statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively.
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- Regressions are weighed by 1960 population, and robust standard errors in parenthesis are adjusted for clustering by judicial divisions. ***, **, and * indicate statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively. B Variable Definitions and Sources Appendix B.1 and B.2 provide a description of the data on voter registration rates and on Black elected officials, respectively. Appendix B.3 presents all other variables. B.1 Voter Registration Rates We located official records on voter registrations for all states of the former Confederacy, except for Texas, from the archive of the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project (VEP), based in Atlanta.64 The availability of race-specific registration statistics for each state and year, together with the corresponding source, is presented in Table B1.
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- Ricca, F. and F. Trebbi (2022). Minority Underrepresentation in U.S. Cities. National Bureau of Economic Research No. w29738.
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- Schickler, E. (2016). Racial Realignment. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
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- Snyder, J. M. and S. Ansolabehere (2004). Reapportionment and Party Realignment in the American States. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 153(1), 433–457.
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- Spilerman, S. (1970). The Causes of Racial Disturbances: A Comparison of Alternative Explanations. American Sociological Review 35(4), 627–649.
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- The long difference model in equation (2) is estimated using a rolling window: from a sample that only includes the counties with a turnout rate around 50% during the 1964 presidential election (bandwidth: 10 percentage points around 50%) to the whole sample of available southern counties (bandwidth: 50 percentage points around 50%). Dots represent the number of counties in each bandwidth (measured on the right vertical axis). Controls are: Low-skilled (%), 1960; Unemployment rate (%), 1960; Families below poverty line (%), 1960; Rural farms (%), 1960; Land devoted to harvested cotton (%), 1959; Pro-Black protest, 1960-64; Anti-Black protest, 1960-64; Green Book establishments, 1955. Regressions are weighed by 1960 population, and robust standard errors are adjusted for clustering by judicial divisions.
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- To the best of our knowledge, the dataset we assembled represents the most comprehensive list of southern registration statistics by race for this period. However, as shown in Table B1, our data are not available for all states and years. In our main analysis, we consider the change in registration rates between 1960 and 1980 (see equation (2) in Section 4.1). In order to maximize the sample size, we replaced 1980 missing values with registration rates measured in subsequent years for Arkansas (1983), Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia (1984).65 We also replaced missing 1964 values using 1963 figures for Arkansas.
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Trebbi, F., P. Aghion, and A. Alesina (2008). Electoral Rules and Minority Representation in U.S. Cities. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(1), 325–357.
- United States Commission on Civil Rights (1959). Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
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- United States Commission on Civil Rights (1961). Voting: 1961 Commission on Civil Rights Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
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- Valentine, P. W. (1968). Negroes Elected in South Warn About White Foe. The Washington Post, December 13, 1968.
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- Wirt, F. M. (1997). We Ain’t What We Was: Civil Rights in the New South. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
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- World War II Army Enlistment Records (NARA-AAD), 1938-1946 Voting age population Due to changes in the legal requirements to vote, age 21+ are used for 1970 and prior years, and age 18+ for 1980 and later years. Official information on voting age population is available every 10 years. A linear interpolation is considered for intercensal years.
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Wright, G. (2013). Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.