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Race, Literacy, and Real Estate Transactions in the Postbellum South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2010

Neil Canaday  and
Charles Reback
Neil Canaday*
Affiliation:
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Wesleyan University, 222 Church Street 021, Middletown, CT 06459. E-mail: ncanaday@wesleyan.edu.
Charles Reback*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina Upstate, Johnson College of Business and Economics, 800 University Way, Spartanburg, SC, 29303. E-mail: creback@upstate.edu.
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Abstract

This article examines barriers that impeded the accumulation of land by African Americans in the postbellum South with a new data set of real estate transactions from 1880 Tennessee. We find that rates of purchase by African Americans differed little between plantation and non-plantation regions. We also find that parcels sold in plantation regions were relatively small, suggesting that African American accumulation of land was not hindered by plantation owners refusing to subdivide their properties. Additionally, we find blacks paid more than whites per acre of quality-constant land, although literacy at least partially mitigated the racial price discrimination.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 428 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2010

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