The civil rights revolution as economic history

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Stanford University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S002205070002283X
• 发表日期: 1999
• 页码: 267-289
• 关键词: labor contracts; UNITED-STATES; IMPACT; DISCRIMINATION; earnings; POLICY; blacks; south

摘要

This address urges Americanists to take the post-World War II era on board as economic history, using the Civil Rights Revolution to set an example. The speed and sweep of the movement's success illustrates the dynamics of an unanticipated revolution as analyzed by Timur Kuran, to be grouped with famous historical surprises such as the triumph of British antislavery and the fall of Soviet communism. The evidence confirms that the breakthroughs of the 1960s constituted an economic as well as a political revolution, in many respects an economic revolution for the entire southern region, as well as for African-Americans.