IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/hpaper/018.html

Was the African American great migration delayed by outlawing emigrant agents?

Author

Listed:
  • Kha Yen Prentice
  • Laszlo Konya
  • David Prentice

Abstract

The question of why more African Americans did not migrate earlier out of the stagnant and repressive South after emancipation remains open. Previous work has highlighted the role of demand and supply conditions. At the time, though, there was much concern about the role of emigrant agents who actively recruited African Americans to migrate away from their homes such that several states introduced emigrant agent laws to effectively drive them out of business. In this paper we provide the first estimates of the quantitative significance of these agents to African American migration. Specifically, we take advantage of a natural experiment provided by different outcomes in court cases in Georgia and Alabama, which resulted in Alabama being prevented from re-introducing these laws between 1882 and 1903 while Georgia's laws remained. Analyzing gross migration out of the two states, we find that the emigrant agent laws had no direct effect on migration. Though there is some limited evidence that the sensitivity of migration flows to economic differences within the South was lower if an emigrant agent law was in place. This suggests that small changes to the emigrant agent laws are unlikely to have led to an earlier Great Migration. Interestingly we also find that the increase in migration began before 1920 which provides some support for the supply-based explanations

Suggested Citation

  • Kha Yen Prentice & Laszlo Konya & David Prentice, 2013. "Was the African American great migration delayed by outlawing emigrant agents?," CEH Discussion Papers 018, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:auu:hpaper:018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEH/WP201308.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Logan, Trevon D., 2009. "Health, human capital, and African-American migration before 1910," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 169-185, April.
    2. Nathan J. Ashby, 2007. "Economic Freedom and Migration Flows between U.S. States," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 677-697, January.
    3. Collins, Wiiliam J., 1997. "When the Tide Turned: Immigration and the Delay of the Great Black Migration," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 57(3), pages 607-632, September.
    4. Suresh Naidu, 2010. "Recruitment Restrictions and Labor Markets: Evidence from the Postbellum U.S. South," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(2), pages 413-445, April.
    5. Greenwood, Michael J, 1975. "Research on Internal Migration in the United States: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 397-433, June.
    6. James E. Anderson, 2011. "The Gravity Model," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 133-160, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Collins, William J. & Wanamaker, Marianne H., 2015. "The Great Migration in Black and White: New Evidence on the Selection and Sorting of Southern Migrants," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(4), pages 947-992, December.
    2. William J. Collins & Marianne H. Wanamaker, 2014. "Selection and Economic Gains in the Great Migration of African Americans: New Evidence from Linked Census Data," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 220-252, January.
    3. Simon Winter, 2020. "“It’s the Economy, Stupid!”: On the Relative Impact of Political and Economic Determinants on Migration," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 39(2), pages 207-252, April.
    4. Ricardo T. Fernholz & Rory Kramer, 2024. "Racing to Zipf's law: Race and metropolitan population size 1910–2020," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(3), pages 649-670, June.
    5. Joshua L Rosenbloom & William A Sundstrom, 2004. "The Decline And Rise Of Interstate Migration In The United States: Evidence From The Ipums, 1850–1990," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, pages 289-325, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    6. Cansu Unver, 2015. "Does Broadband Facilitate Immigration Flows?," Discussion Papers 15-01, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    7. Libman, Alexander & Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten & Yadav, Gaurav, 2013. "Are human rights and economic well-being substitutes? The evidence from migration patterns across the Indian states," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 139-164.
    8. 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).
    9. Cansu Ünver, 2015. "Does Broadband Facilitate Immigration Flows? A Non-Linear Instrumental Variable Approach," Ekonomi-tek - International Economics Journal, Turkish Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 69-104, January.
    10. Margo, Robert A., 2016. "Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(2), pages 301-341, June.
    11. Henry, Ruby, 2009. "Does Racism Affect a Migrant's Choice of Destination?," IZA Discussion Papers 4349, IZA Network @ LISER.
    12. Chakrabarti, Anindya S. & Sengupta, Aparna, 2017. "Productivity differences and inter-state migration in the U.S.: A multilateral gravity approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 156-168.
    13. repec:ags:aaea22:335746 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Eriksson, Katherine, 2019. "Moving North and into jail? The great migration and black incarceration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 526-538.
    15. Mulholland, Sean E. & Hernandez-Julian, Rey, 2013. "Does Economic Freedom Lead to Selective Migration By Education?," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 43(01).
    16. Henry, Ruby, 2009. "Does racism affect a migrant's choice of destination ? A case study of Africans Americans, 1995-2000," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 0906, CEPREMAP.
    17. Xie, Bin, 2025. "The aggregate and distributional effects of immigration restrictions: The 1920s Quota Acts and the Great Black Migration," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 25-55.
    18. Robert Baumann & Justin Svec & Francis Sanzari, 2015. "The Relationship between Net Migration and Unemployment: The Role of Expectations," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 41(3), pages 443-458, June.
    19. Jaime de Melo & Alessandro Nicita, 2018. "Non-Tariff Measures: Data and Quantitative Tools of Analysis," Post-Print hal-01731305, HAL.
    20. Li, Xiaomeng & Huang, Siyu & Chen, Jiawei & Chen, Qinghua, 2020. "Analysis of the driving factors of U.S. domestic population mobility," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 539(C).
    21. Cebeci, Tolga & Fernandes, Ana M. & Freund, Caroline & Pierola, Martha Denisse, 2012. "Exporter dynamics database," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6229, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • N41 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • N91 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    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:auu:hpaper:018. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/chanuau.html .

    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.