The Political Economy of Legal Segregation: Jim Crow and Racial Employment Patterns

Legal segregation was a fact of life for blacks in the American South during the first half of the present century. These laws are sometimes compared to South African apartheid . However, there seems to be one important difference: Jim Crow, unlike apartheid , did not directly hamper the ability of blacks to compete with whites in labor markets. Our paper explores this problem. We report evidence which suggests that, in spite of the absence of direct labor market restrictions confronting blacks subject to Jim Crow, these laws nevertheless reduced the ability of blacks to compete with whites for jobs.