IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v117y2002i1p225-268..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Schooling of Southern Blacks: The Roles of Legal Activism and Private Philanthropy, 1910–1960

Author

Listed:
  • John J. Donohue III
  • James J. Heckman
  • Petra E. Todd

Abstract

Improvements in education and educational quality are widely acknowledged to be major contributors to black economic progress in the twentieth century. This paper investigates the sources of improvement in black education in the South in the first half of the century and demonstrates the important roles of social activism, especially NAACP litigation and private philanthropy, in improving the quality and availability of public schooling. Many scholars view education as a rival to social activism in explaining black economic progress, but such a view misses the important role of philanthropic and legal interventions in promoting education.

Suggested Citation

  • John J. Donohue III & James J. Heckman & Petra E. Todd, 2002. "The Schooling of Southern Blacks: The Roles of Legal Activism and Private Philanthropy, 1910–1960," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 225-268.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:117:y:2002:i:1:p:225-268.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/003355302753399490
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elizabeth U. Cascio, 2014. "Valuing the Vote: The Redistribution of Voting Rights and State Funds following the Voting Rights Act of 1965," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 379-433.
    2. Ciani Emanuele & Fisher Paul, 2019. "Dif-in-Dif Estimators of Multiplicative Treatment Effects," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, January.
    3. Daniel Aaronson & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2011. "The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(5), pages 821-888.
    4. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2006. "Historical Perspectives on Racial Differences in Schooling in the United States," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 107-154, Elsevier.
    5. Collins, William J., 2021. "The Great Migration of Black Americans from the US South: A guide and interpretation," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    6. Borghans, Lex & Weel, Bas ter & Weinberg, Bruce A., 2005. "People People: Social Capital and the Labor-Market - Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups," Research Memorandum 002, Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    7. Lex Borghans & Bas Ter Weel & Bruce A. Weinberg, 2014. "People Skills and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 287-334, April.
    8. Maurer, Stephan E., 2019. "Oil discoveries and education provision in the Postbellum South," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    9. Dionysia Lambiri & Alessandra Faggian & Neil Wrigley, 2017. "Linked-trip effects of ‘town-centre-first' era foodstore development: An assessment using difference-in-differences," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 44(1), pages 160-179, January.
    10. David Card & Ciprian Domnisoru & Lowell Taylor, 2022. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Evidence from the Golden Age of Upward Mobility," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(S1), pages 39-95.
    11. Petra E. Todd & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 2007. "The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School, and Racial Test Score Gaps," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 91-136.
    12. Canaday, Neil & Tamura, Robert, 2009. "White discrimination in provision of black education: Plantations and towns," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 1490-1530, July.
    13. David Card & Leah Clark & Ciprian Domnisoru & Lowell Taylor, 2024. "School Equalization in the Shadow of Jim Crow: Causes and Consequences of Resource Disparity in Mississippi circa 1940," NBER Working Papers 32496, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Nathaniel G. Hilger, 2015. "The Great Escape: Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Since 1940," NBER Working Papers 21217, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Baker, Richard B., 2019. "Finding the fat: The relative impact of budget fluctuations on African-American schools," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 93-113.
    16. Rodney Ramcharan, 2010. "Inequality and Redistribution: Evidence from U.S. Counties and States, 1890-1930," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 729-744, November.
    17. Katherine Eriksson, 2015. "Access to Schooling and the Black-White Incarceration Gap in the Early 20th Century US South: Evidence from Rosenwald Schools," NBER Working Papers 21727, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Patrick Bayer & Kerwin Kofi Charles, 2016. "Divergent Paths: Structural Change, Economic Rank, and the Evolution of Black-White Earnings Differences, 1940-2014," NBER Working Papers 22797, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Frisvold, David & Golberstein, Ezra, 2011. "School quality and the education–health relationship: Evidence from Blacks in segregated schools," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1232-1245.
    20. Daniel Aaronson & Fabian Lange & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2014. "Fertility Transitions along the Extensive and Intensive Margins," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(11), pages 3701-3724, November.
    21. Bailey, Martha J. & Collins, William J., 2006. "The Wage Gains of African-American Women in the 1940s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(3), pages 737-777, September.
    22. David Frisvold & Ezra Golberstein, 2013. "The Effect of School Quality on Black-White Health Differences: Evidence From Segregated Southern Schools," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(6), pages 1989-2012, December.
    23. William J. Collins & Michael Q. Moody, 2017. "Racial Differences in American Women's Labor Market Outcomes: A Long-Run View," NBER Working Papers 23397, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Carruthers, Celeste K. & Wanamaker, Marianne H., 2013. "Closing the gap? The effect of private philanthropy on the provision of African-American schooling in the U.S. south," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 53-67.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:117:y:2002:i:1:p:225-268.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.