A New Type of Black Ghetto in the Plantation South

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Abstract In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty, and alterations in agriculture, the black population in the plantation regions of the American South has been redistributed. The predominant spatial trend is nucleation of a group of people that was dispersed throughout farms and plantations. Among the types of places where blacks are concentrated are municipalities in which they comprise the majority of the population. This article assesses recent spatial changes in the municipal black population in the Yazoo Delta, a nonmetropolitan region of Mississippi. At the regional scale, unequal changes in white and black municipal populations produced an increase in segregation among the municipalities of the Yazoo Delta. At the local scale, a pattern of residential desegregation has emerged in particular municipalities. This pattern is indicative of a stage in the transformation of the municipalities into ones in which the population is essentially all black. The geography of municipalities that are now predominantly black not only has been altered by movement of blacks into the previously white residential areas, but also by construction of new federally-sponsored housing and by decline and restructuring of the business district. Municipalities in which blacks comprise 75 percent or more of the population are interpreted as a new type of black ghetto. Black ghetto towns have characteristics that are similar to those of metropolitan black ghettos, including a high poverty rate, federal housing that has contributed to the concentration of a minority population, and lack of employment opportunities. Such towns are not confined to the Yazoo Delta, but are scattered across the old plantation regions of the American South. Despite their importance as spatial concentrations of a minority population, black ghetto towns are obscure places that face bleak futures.