Rural Segregation and Racial Violence: Historical Effects of Spatial Racism

To review the evidence of changes in segregation over time, we use a newly developed household‐level measure of residential segregation that can distinguish between the effects of increasing racial homogeneity of a location and the tendency to segregate within a location given a particular racial composition (Logan and Parman ). This household measure of segregation reveals high levels of segregation in the South and rising levels of segregation in both cities and rural communities over the first half of the 20 th century. We review new evidence that this segregation was highly correlated with interracial violence in the form or lynchings. We conclude with a discussion of the interaction between residential segregation, racial animosity, and violence.