CITIZENSHIP AND PUBLIC-SCHOOLS - ACCOUNTING FOR RACIAL-INEQUALITY IN EDUCATION IN THE PRE-DISFRANCHISEMENT AND POST-DISFRANCHISEMENT SOUTH

Building on the arguments that public education is a state-provided go od and that citizenship rights affect groups' access to state-provided goods, we ask whether an abrupt transformation of U.S. citizenship ri ghts-the disfranchisement of Blacks and many poor Whites in the late n ineteenth- and early twentieth-century South-affected the distribution of public educational opportunities and enrollments. Using county-lev el data for six southern states in 1890 and 1910, we find that disfran chisement changed the way local governments distributed educational op portunities to Black children and White children and produced greater racial inequalities in school enrollments. After disfranchisenment, ra cial inequalities in educational opportunities were greatest in counti es with relatively large Black populations, with relatively strong tax bases, and where the Democratic Party was least challenged. School en rollments of Blacks and Whites were limited by insufficient educationa l opportunities, suggesting that school expansion in the South was hin dered by shortages of educational opportunities; but the limitation fo r Black children was significantly greater than the limitation experie nced by White children.