Working Paper: NBER ID: w25990
Authors: Owen Thompson
Abstract: Prior to the racial integration of schools in the southern United States, predominantly African American schools were staffed almost exclusively by African American teachers as well, and teaching constituted an extraordinarily large share of professional employment among southern blacks. The large-scale desegregation of southern schools occurring after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act represented a potential threat to this employment base, and this paper estimates how student integration affected black teacher employment. Using newly assembled archival data from 781 southern school districts observed between 1964 and 1972, I estimate that a school district transitioning from fully segregated to fully integrated education, which approximates the experience of the modal southern district in this period, led to a 31.8% reduction in black teacher employment. A series of tests indicate that these employment reductions were not due to school district self-selection into desegregation or unobserved district characteristics associated with desegregation. Additional analyses estimate changes in the occupational distribution by race in the 1960 and 1970 Decennial Censuses and indicate that displaced southern black teachers either entered lower skill occupations within the South or migrated out of the region to continue teaching, and that southern school districts compensated for reduced black teacher employment by employing fewer total teachers and by increasing their recruitment of white teachers, especially less experienced white teachers and white male teachers.
Keywords: school desegregation; black teacher employment; civil rights
JEL Codes: I24; J23; J7
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Student desegregation (I28) | reduction in black teacher employment (J79) |
| Transition from fully segregated to fully integrated education (I24) | reduction in black teacher employment (J79) |
| Reduced black teacher employment (J79) | fewer total teachers employed (J45) |
| Reduced black teacher employment (J79) | increased recruitment of white teachers (J45) |
| Reduced black teacher employment (J79) | displaced southern black teachers enter lower skill occupations (J69) |
| Reduced black teacher employment (J79) | displaced southern black teachers migrate to continue teaching elsewhere (R23) |