Pathways to Progress: The Role of Academic and Technical High Schools in Black Economic Advancement, 1900-1940

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of high school education in stimulating Black economic progress from 1900-1940 by tracing the outcomes of Blacks who attended high school in the Jim Crow South. By utilizing linkages of people across Census years and a novel hand-classified dataset of 1,500 Black high schools built in the South between 1900 and 1940, I estimate the returns to schooling for Blacks who attended academic versus technical high schools along the lines of wages, white-collar labor force participation, and migration. I find that Blacks who attended academic high schools earned higher wages, worked white-collar jobs with higher frequency, and migrated with less frequency compared to Blacks who attended technical high schools. This thesis contributes to an important literature on the relationship between school quality and earnings and the muted progress of Blacks in the 20th Century relative to other racial groups. By allowing Black Americans to have a more general and adaptable education, I argue that academic schools helped Blacks retain their skills in the face of technological change, and greater access to academic high schools would have accelerated Black economic progress during this period.