Racial Diversity and Racial Policy Preferences: The Great Migration and Civil Rights

Abstract

Between 1940 and 1970, more than 4 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States, during the Second Great Migration. This same period witnessed the struggle and eventual success of the civil rights movement in ending institutionalized racial discrimination. This paper shows that the Great Migration and support for civil rights are causally linked. Predicting Black inflows with a shift-share instrument, we find that the Great Migration raised support for the Democratic Party, increased Congress members’ propensity to promote civil rights legislation, and encouraged pro-civil rights activism outside the US South. We provide different pieces of evidence that support for civil rights was not confined to the Black electorate, but was also shared by segments of the white population.

The causal effect of ethnic diversity on support for redistribution and the role of discrimination

“…Studies relying on this identification strategy have shown that a 1 percentage point increase in the local share of immigrants increased voting for farright or anti-immigration parties by 0.8 to 2.4 percentage points, depending on the country: for France, see Edo et al (2019); for Austria, see Halla et al (2017); for Italy, see Barone et al (2016); Bratti et al (2020); and for the US see Tabellini (2020) (referring to European immigration between 1910and 1930). Yet, Calderon et al (2022) instead show that immigration of blacks within the US between 1940 and 1970 increased support for the Democratic party and civil rights thereafter in the host areas.…”

“…Yet, Calderon et al. (2022) instead show that immigration of blacks within the US between 1940 and 1970 increased support for the Democratic party and civil rights thereafter in the host areas.…”

Dictating play to the left wing: Does soccer make you more Democratic?

“…Finally, Calderon et al ( 73 ) find that African-American migration from 1940 to 1970 led to a steady influx of migrants to the North and West of the country, in contrast to the South with its segregationist position. The Great Migration led to a large increase in the Democratic vote share in these areas.…”

Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act

“…To test these ambiguous predictions, we examine the relationship between the VRA and racially motivated hate crimes in the long-run. As in Calderon et al (2023), we restrict attention to hate crimes committed between 2000 and 2018, and estimate regressions that include state fixed effects, the vector of baseline pre-VRA controls, and the interaction between the 1960 Black population share and the VRA indicator. 62 We present results in Table 5.…”