Residential Segregation under Jim Crow: Whites, Blacks, and Mulattoes in Southern Cities, 1880-1920

We study the residential patterns of blacks and mulattoes in 10 Southern cities in 1880 and 1920. Researchers have documented the salience of social differences among African Americans in this period, partly related to mulattoes' higher occupational status. Did these differences result in clustering of these two groups in different neighborhoods, and were mulattoes less separated from whites? If so, did the differences diminish in these decades after Reconstruction due a Jim Crow system that did not distinguish between blacks and mulattoes? We use geocoded census microdata for 1880 and 1920 to address these questions. Segregation between whites and both blacks was already high in 1880, especially at a fine spatial scale, and it increased sharply by 1920. In this respect, whites did not distinguish between these two groups. However, blacks and mulattoes were quite segregated from one another in 1880, and even more so by 1920. This pattern did not result from mulattoes' moderately higher-class position. Hence, as the color line between whites and all non-whites was becoming harder, blacks and mulattoes were separating further from each other. Understanding what led to this pattern remains a key question about racial identities and racialization in the early twentieth century.