I just read Tyler Cowen's short book review of Douglas Flamming's Bound For Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America. It looks like an interesting read. Evidently, L.A. had no segregation laws on the books in the early 1900s and even had some statutes specifically outlawing discrimination against black people. However, this didn't stop the widespread segregation of saloons and hotels here. Cowen calls the book a "good antidote to libertarians who assign too much blame to state
governments, and not enough blame to voluntary norms, when it comes to
Southern segregation and Jim Crow."
At any rate, I just put the book on my wish list...
Basically before the early 1900s, whites (mostly 1st or 2nd generation European immigrants, like Isaac Van Nuys or Griffith J. Griffith) for the most part intermingled with other races; in fact it wasn't uncommon for white Americans to "hop the border" and go live in Mexico.
All things changed when the railroads charged $1 for a Chicago-to-Los Angeles train ticket and the Midwesterner influx began. Then, colored people suddenly became a "problem."
Posted by: militant angeleno | April 15, 2008 at 01:53 AM
Interesting dynamic you write about, M.A. Seems like a forerunner of today's anti-immigrant sentiment against Mexicans. As in: "Immigrants are great in numbers just slightly below what we need to meet our cheap labor needs, but anything beyond that and it's time to trot out racial prejudice and discrimination as a reaction..."
Posted by: Fake Angeleno | April 15, 2008 at 09:21 AM