Black Threat and Incarceration in Postbellum Georgia

Abstract

The relative size of the black population has been linked with the exercise of social control in both contemporary and historical contexts. In this article I use data from late nineteenth-century Georgia to examine several neglected issues: the multiple sources and targets of black threat, temporal changes in the relative size of the black and the rate at which black and white males were incarcerated. Time series analysis reveals that declines in the relative size of the black male and urban black population significantly affected the rate at which black males were incarcerated, particularly before disenfranchisement in 1909. In contrast, changes in the black population had no effect on the incarceration of whites. These findings suggest that declines in the relative size of certain segments of the black population threatened the labor supply and intensified social control efforts. I conclude by considering the empirical implications of these findings. Contemporary theorists have long contended that the relative size of the minority population has significant implications for the exercise of social control (Blalock 1967; Blauner 1972; Turk 1969). As minorities comprise a larger proportion of the social control efforts intensify, presumably because minorities threaten the existing distribution of economic rewards and political power. To the extent that minority group members are linked with greater criminality, as is the case of black Americans, they presumably threaten public safety, increasing fear of crime and efforts to control it (Liska, Chamlin & Reed 1985; Liska, Lawrence & Benson 1981; Lizotte & Bordua 1980; Moeller 1989). This article focuses on the black population of the postbellum South and changes in its relative size between 1868 and 1936. As a problem population, blacks were not simply a threat to white hegemony. For certain segments of the white black labor was an indispensable resource (Adamson 1983, *This is a revision of a paper presented at the annual ineetings of the Amnerican Society of Criminologiy, Novemnber 8-11, 1989, Reno, Nevada. Direct correspondence to the author at the Departmnent of Sociologiy, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. ? The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, December 1990, 69(2):373-393 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.49 on Mon, 29 Aug 2016 04:24:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 374 / Social Forces 69:2, December 199