Legacies of American Slavery: Status Attainment among Southern Blacks after Emancipation

Abstract

This study examines the legacy of American slavery at the individual, intragenerational level by analyzing life-history data from roughly 1,400 ex-slaves and free blacks covering the antebellum and postbellum periods. We test a model of durable inequality that considers the potentially vicious circle created by status persistence across institutional regimes. Our findings suggest that the antebellum regime evidenced partial institutional reproduction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, owing to the fact that the antebellum distinction of free blacks and slaves had durable status effects long after emancipation, but over time, black status attainment became largely decoupled from the internal hierarchy of slavery. Mediating effects, for example, the Freedmen Bureaus educational interventions and the black diaspora, also served to curtail the reproduction of antebellum status. Implications are pursued with respect to both institutional theory and stratification research.