Counties expelling Blacks after ‘Brown v. Board of Education’

Reading the late James Löwen’s Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism reveals that, little-known to the casual historian, the vast majority of the rural North, essentially all the rural and even small-city West, and large parts of the nonplantation South completely excluded African-Americans. Some of this has been discussed on previous posts in this blog here, here and here; however, for this post my goal is to see how many counties had their black population expelled after Brown v. Board of Education. Löwen used that fact to show that racial attitudes in white rural America did not really change after 1940, although election statistics suggest that at least for a while opposition to the civil rights movement of that era was weak in the rural North and nonplantation South.

In my older post about attempting to correlate sundown status with long-term GOP voting in the nonplantation South and some parts of the Midwest, one does see at least one county — McCreary County in Kentucky— that definitely expelled its black population following Brown v. Board of Education. For this post I have looked at the nonplantation South — defined, as in older posts, as the seven states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia — and examined:

1. all counties in the nonplantation South which had at least eleven blacks in 1930 but fewer than five black households in 1970
• a few counties in Kentucky and West Virginia discussed in earlier posts will not be covered as doing so would be repetitive
2. other counties in the nonplantation South which had fewer than 25 black households in 1970 and which show evidence of major declines after 1930
3. three counties in western Virginia — a state belonging mainly to the plantation South— where I have gathered via population figures strong evidence for the expulsion of blacks after Brown

I have assumed that if a county expelled its black population as a direct result of the Brown v. Board of Education decision:

1. it would show a very large fall in its black population between the 1950 and 1960 censuses
1. I have used a cut-off of 50 percent fall between 1950 and 1960 for any likely or possible case
2. I have also used a cut-off of at least 30 black residents in 1950 , and fewer than 50 in 1960, for a likely case
3. all assessments of likely expulsion of blacks after Brown are, however, influenced by my own discretion — although I have not examined precise details for any county

Counties Previously Undiscussed That May Have Expelled Blacks After Brown v. Board of Education:

County		1930	1940	1950	1960	1970 households	1950-1960 change
Benton	Arkansas	88	46	11	23	5	109.09%
Carroll	Arkansas	25	8	5	6	0	20.00%
Greene	Arkansas	22	71	26	14	5	-46.15%
Madison	Arkansas	16	15	2	3	0	50.00%
Montgomery	Arkansas	136	90	14	20	3	42.86%
Scott	Arkansas	13	454	70	2	0	-97.14%
Van Buren	Arkansas	121	137	50	95	17	90.00%
Bracken	Kentucky	222	222	129	63	20	-51.16%
Breathitt	Kentucky	203	128	79	49	5	-37.97%
Carlisle	Kentucky	294	218	104	84	19	-19.23%
Carter	Kentucky	53	48	29	11	5	-62.07%
Grant	Kentucky	184	143	77	59	15	-23.38%
Johnson	Kentucky	46	14	3	1	1	-66.67%
Lawrence	Kentucky	124	95	69	41	15	-40.58%
Livingston	Kentucky	350	224	111	78	18	-29.73%
Marshall	Kentucky	62	155	11	10	0	-9.09%
McLean	Kentucky	315	247	99	60	15	-39.39%
Menifee	Kentucky	34	24	19	11	3	-42.11%
Robertson	Kentucky	46	40	31	18	5	-41.94%
Trimble	Kentucky	27	22	12	3	0	-75.00%
Atchison	Missouri	16	1	3	3	3	0.00%
Benton	Missouri	106	97	31	22	2	-29.03%
Caldwell	Missouri	102	45	11	5	0	-54.55%
Clark	Missouri	23	26	11	8	0	-27.27%
Daviess	Missouri	110	90	55	30	4	-45.45%
DeKalb	Missouri	38	19	10	0	0	-100.00%
Grundy	Missouri	85	75	35	18	6	-48.57%
Holt	Missouri	36	31	9	2	0	-77.78%
Iron	Missouri	129	132	85	48	15	-43.53%
Knox	Missouri	94	66	27	18	3	-33.33%
Miller	Missouri	89	54	17	20	10	17.65%
Nodaway	Missouri	95	33	19	8	4	-57.89%
Osage	Missouri	74	61	21	14	0	-33.33%
Perry	Missouri	99	75	30	9	4	-70.00%
Saint Clair	Missouri	134	173	55	36	7	-34.55%
Sainte Genevieve	Missouri	342	205	142	70	17	-50.70%
Scotland	Missouri	17	8	3	4	0	33.33%
Sullivan	Missouri	26	17	8	2	0	-75.00%
Vernon	Missouri	76	49	27	15	3	-44.44%
Dewey	Oklahoma	22	5	12	0	0	-100.00%
Latimer	Oklahoma	385	235	166	120	20	-27.71%
Mayes	Oklahoma	531	356	153	105	18	-31.37%
Roger Mills	Oklahoma	95	16	11	1	0	-90.91%
Grundy	Tennessee	155	66	43	15	2	-65.12%
Jackson	Tennessee	234	210	103	34	4	-66.99%
Overton	Tennessee	136	116	83	77	14	-7.23%
Polk	Tennessee	152	83	76	28	0	-63.16%
Sequatchie	Tennessee	11	8	3	0	0	-100.00%
Van Buren	Tennessee	65	81	23	31	6	34.78%
Archer	Texas	19	16	16	19	3	18.75%
Bandera	Texas	11	3	15	19	3	26.67%
Callahan	Texas	38	20	7	2	0	-71.43%
Coke	Texas	66	38	5	4	0	-20.00%
Concho	Texas	82	27	10	3	0	-70.00%
Glasscock	Texas	14	20	11	13	3	18.18%
Mason	Texas	57	100	64	23	3	-64.06%
Carroll	Virginia	374	332	392	74	24	-81.12%
Dickenson	Virginia	302	548	319	149	22	-53.29%
Highland	Virginia	153	86	118	18	6	-84.75%
Tucker	West Virginia	77	68	46	20	2	-56.52%

Conclusion:

The census figures above suggest that no more than eight counties not discussed in earlier post are likely to have expelled their black populations as a direct result of Brown v. Board of Education.

One — Grundy County in Tennessee, historically home of the most militant unions anywhere in the South and also home of a famous school training civil rights activists — is documented in Sundown Towns.

Two others — Highland County in Virginia and Tucker County in West Virginia — were the “inspiration” for this survey inasmuch as Löwen did not discuss either in Sundown Towns, but my mapping of counties with few or no blacks in the 1970 and 2010 censuses clearly showed these as quite distinct, yet mapping from 1930 showed they previously had black populations. A fourth — Jackson County in Tennessee, which voted even for George McGovern — is documented on Löwen’s website at Tougaloo College, but not in Sundown Towns itself.

Most counties tabulated above either did not show the necessary decline in black population over time, or got rid of their black populations well before Brown. Löwen did note counties that got rid of their African–Americans during the 1930s, and several here — Roger Mills County in Oklahoma, Concho County in Texas, and Johnson County in Kentucky — appear very likely to have done so looking at the table, whilst some others in the table above could have banned new black residents during that decade.

On the whole, the number of expulsions of blacks as a direct result of Brown is not that large, although the table must understate the total. such expulsions do prove how little white attitudes had changed in a nonplantation South whose voting patterns remained dominated by Civil War party loyalties.