ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a review of the relationship between economic development and black migration in the post-bellum South. It discusses a method for circumscribing former plantation areas and specify hypotheses as to the nature of migration in plantation areas. The chapter presents the results of analyses that test these hypotheses using data from the Public Use Microdata Sample-D of the 1980 Census of Population and Housing. The accurate evaluation of the effects of plantation agriculture’s legacy on contemporary migration patterns demands the correct delimitation of “the contours of the southern plantation economy”. Black migration out of the South was also limited by the unwillingness of northern employers to hire blacks. Plantation agriculture specializing in the production of cotton predominated in parts of the region and had an overwhelming influence on the overall political economy of the South. The chapter concludes with the effects of contemporary black migration on the former plantation areas’ human capital stock.
