Schooling and Political Activism in the Early Civil Rights Era
Does education lead to political activity? We find that a large, early 20th century school construction program, the Rosenwald schools, led to more NAACP branches in the rural South starting in the early 1940s, i.e. prior to the classic U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Branch growth was stronger where Jim Crow occupational segregation prevented Black men from realizing some of the economic gains of their education. Our findings lend support to theories emphasizing that economic context can act as a critical mediator in determining whether human capital causes political engagement.
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Copy CitationDaniel Aaronson, Mark Borgschulte, Sunny Liu, and Bhashkar Mazumder, "Schooling and Political Activism in the Early Civil Rights Era," NBER Working Paper 35842 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35842.Download Citation
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