Black Undertakers in Northern Cities during the Great Migration: The Rise of an Entrepreneurial Occupation

Abstract

During the Great Migration, undertaking became an important entrepreneurial occupation for blacks in northern cities. Black undertakers had a protected consumer market due to the refused of white undertakers to serve blacks and to the importance of the funeral in traditional black culture. This protected market also had an ecological foundation. Census data show that as the black populations of the urban North became more spatially isolated after the Great Migration, blacks became overrepresented in undertaking. This overrepresentation, moreover, was positively correlated with black spatial isolation. These findings are in line with the “residential segregation version” of the protected market hypothesis, which holds that a protected market for ethnic entrepreneurs can arise from ecological factors as well as from social distance norms and special demands of co-ethnic consumers. The results also suggest that undertaking became an “ethnic niche” for blacks in the urban North during the Great Migration.