The Tenant Labor Market and Lynching in the South: A Test of Split Labor Market Theory*

Abstract

Split labor market theory was originally advanced as a general approach explaining ethnic antagonism as the result of class‐based interests. In this investigation, the threat to “high‐priced” (white) labor from “cheap” (black) labor within the farm tenancy system of the postbellum South is examined as an underlying cause of the lynching of blacks by whites. Supporting this interpretation, the ratio of black to white tenants in southern counties, a measure of the level of economic threat to high‐priced labor, is shown to be a strong predictor of lynching rates in the Cotton South. Findings for the Non‐Cotton South, however, are inconsistent with theoretical expectations. We conclude that racial violence linked to economic competition between working‐class whites and blacks was limited to that part of the South dominated by the plantation system.