Investigación y publicaciones

The South in the 21st Century characterizes an El Dorado for Blacks in the U.S. as the

region becomes more attractive (Anderson forthcoming, 1). An El Dorado represents a South whose transformation has been tied to the close of the Civil Rights movement as Black

migration out of the region has slowed and Black primary and return migrations into the region

has increased. This is in sharp contrast to the Midwest and Northeast's declining Promise Land of

the 20th Century. Still, the South has been neglected as a region of importance in the post-Civil Rights era. Much of the neglect can be attributed to a specific focus on challenges that Blacks confronted in the non-South including the ramifications of deindustrialization (Harrison and Bluestone 1982), the negative effects of White flight—central city to suburb movement (Krysan 2002), and the dire consequences of racial residential segregation (Massey and Denton 1993). And, when the South has been studied, it has been examined as part of the growing Sunbelt (Iceland et al 2012) and rarely on its own terms. Yet, the emphasis on Southern regional analysis to examine Black quality of life is not new. W.E.B. Du Bois conducted systematic studies on the social, economic, and physical conditions of Blacks in the region well before Sociology was established as a discipline (Johnson 1937; Wright 2006). From 1897 to 1914, Du Bois led the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, directing 16 studies of Blacks in the region. Seventy-six percent of the 7.6 million Blacks resided in the South as of 1900, and Atlanta, Georgia was the

geographic heart of the then present-day Black population and contained the largest number of Blacks of any State in the U.S. (Wright 2014). From North Carolina, Howard W. Odum later made his own efforts to study Blacks and Southern cultural life (Odum 1951; Wright 2014). His work reconfirmed the importance of the region in understanding Black quality of life.

The South has grown into one of the most dynamic regions of economic growth in the U.S. in the post-Civil Rights era. In contrast, the Northeast and Midwest remain stagnant or in

decline (Pandit 1997; Frey 2004; MDC 2010). Overall population growth in the South is also exploding and the proportion of Blacks living in the region has increased steadily over time. As of the 2010 Census, over 55% of the Black population resides in the South confirming the region’s continued importance for African-Americans. Furthermore, Black migrants relocate to Southern metropolitan areas in search of opportunities, and the Black population, already in the South, is less likely to leave the region (Frey 2004; Hunt et al 2012, 2013; Anderson forthcoming 1). And, when Southern Blacks do move, they are more likely to move to Southern metropolitan areas within the region (MDC 2002, 2010). According to Iceland and colleagues, the South and West are the most racially integrated regions in the U.S. (Table 5.2, 2002). Further, Southern racial residential segregation is experiencing the largest declines in smaller and newer

metropolises (Logan, Stults, and Farley 2002). And because of low and declining racial residential segregation in the South, Blacks should find themselves in more racially integrated neighborhoods in the region. This assumption is due to the wide number of studies that connect racial residential segregation to various deleterious consequences—infant and adult mortality, low educational attainment, underemployment, death rates from homicide, high rates of single motherhood, and the constricted accumulation of equity in homes (LaViest 1989, 1993; Polednak 1990, 1993; Peterson and Krivo 1993, 1999; Hart et al 1998; Collins and Williams 1999).

In the post-Civil Rights South, as the Black population grows and racial residential segregation declines, it is no surprise that the region has become a key destination for African Americans. The non-South has been studied intently in the latter half of the twentieth century to understand Black progress in the U.S. Thus, it appears that to understand Black progress in the 21st century, one cannot neglect the South. Specifically, this study asks whether or not Black non-South to South migrants are able to access high quality neighborhoods, and whether there

are differences between primary and return migrants. Furthermore, this study examines the effects of individual socioeconomic and metropolitan characteristics on Black migrants’ access into high quality neighborhoods in the post-Civil Rights South.

The results from these analyses will have implications for scholarly literatures in the areas of: (a) residential settlement and distribution patterns in the South (Freeman 2010; Lloyd 2012; Waren 2012; Connor 2014), (b) locational attainment—access to quality neighborhoods—for varying racial/ethnic groups (Alba and Logan 1993; Logan and Alba 1993; Anderson

forthcoming, 3), and (c) differences in locational attainment outcomes for Black primary and return migrations (Hunt et al 2012, 2013; Pendergrass 2013a, 2013b). The analysis of data from 1970 to 2010 will contribute to understanding whether Black migrants are able to translate socioeconomic status into quality neighborhoods in the South.

This study makes three main contributions to the aforementioned literatures. First, the study examines the Southern region to understand differences in neighborhood quality for Blacks since the close of the Civil Rights movement. The South houses the majority of America's Black population, and through increased urbanization and the improvement in race relations in the region through the passing of Civil Rights legislation, it becomes a relevant place of study in understanding Black progress in the U.S. Little is known about Black locational attainment in the Contemporary South, and specifically the ability of Black primary and return migrants to translate socioeconomic resources into quality neighborhoods.

Second, the locational attainment literature generally focuses its examination on major metropolitan areas in the Northeast, Midwest and West, paying little attention to the unique differences that the South presents. In comparing locational attainment across metropolitan neighborhoods in the South, this project hopes to shed light on these differences. This study

uses confidential Census data, from the Decennial Censuses 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 and the American Community Survey 2006-2010, which provides individual-level data at the census tract level. Generally, previous studies have noted that the use of the locational attainment strategy has been limited due to the lack of individual-level data (Logan and Alba 1993). This study incorporates both individual- and metropolitan-level factors in understanding locational attainment and employs hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) because locational attainment has been shown to be impacted by both micro-level and macro-level indicators (South et al 2011a, 2011b; Pais et al 2012).

Lastly, this study ties into the literature on the Black primary and return migrations to the South in focusing on the ability of these non-South migrants to locate into quality

neighborhoods between 1970 and 2010. This study incorporates primary and return migrants to the South to better understand the role that non-South to South migration has on locational attainment. By including a focus on migration, this study explains the relative locational

advantage or disadvantage of the growing Black relocation to the South, and whether Blacks are able to translate higher socioeconomic status into quality neighborhoods.