Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South [Book Review]

Stanford University economic historian Gavin Wright's clear, accessible, and deeply researched book argues persuasively, first, that it was civil rights laws and federal court decisions from Brown v. Board of Education (1954) on that substantially enhanced the economic well-being of southern blacks after 1960. These improvements in black status, he demonstrates with both statistical evidence and qualitative case studies, would not have come about through the operation of market forces alone. Strong legal pressure from outside the region was necessary to shock and awe Jim Crow. Second, his simple, informative graphs and tables show that African American improvement did not come at the expense of southern whites. The civil rights revolution was not a zero-sum game; unleashing black talent made everyone better off