Black population concentration and the impact of desegregation on white private school enrollment and local financial support for public schools in the United States nonmetropolitan South

This dissertation examines how desegregation affected white private school enrollment and local financial support for public schools in the U.S. nonmetropolitan South from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Using data from four population and housing decennial censuses (1960–1990) and four U.S. and state government censuses (1961-1962-1991-1992), I investigate trends in white private school enrollment for all nonmetropolitan counties with white-black racial/ethnic group structures in the eleven states of the former Confederacy and trends in local financial support for public schools in six of those states. I find that the average percentage of white elementary and secondary students enrolled in private schools increases steadily during the 1960s and 1970s—as desegregation progressed—and then basically stabilizes during the 1980s. Increases are greatest in those counties with relatively large black populations. These findings suggest that whites in predominantly black counties of the rural South tended to respond to public school desegregation by taking their children out of the public schools and enrolling them in private ones. I also find that although the average per pupil tax dollars for public schools generated at the local level increases dramatically from the pre- to post-desegregation time period, some counties are less likely to experience such increases than others. Specifically, counties with increasing black population shares experienced lower funding levels relative to other counties. This defunding effect suggests that whites may have responded to the “threat” of an increasing black population by decreasing their support for public schools. I do not find any evidence that black population share per se is related to either local public school funding or changes in such funding in any of the time periods examined. However, I do find that black educational status is positively related to funding levels in the post-desegregation time period, especially in the 1980s.