Borderline: The Role of Virginia's Independent Cities in Preserving Structural Racism after Desegregation in Hampton Roads

Abstract

Research on race and racism in the United States increasingly has emphasized the need for examination of structural racism – the myriad path-dependent legacy effects of which have been ignored by the Supreme Court. This paper takes a new approach to understanding how structural racism has affected generations of Southern black communities by looking at the physical transformations of municipal governments in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia, unlike other states, has a unique form of municipal jurisdiction, the independent city. Separate from their surrounding counties, Virginia’s independent cities encompass both traditional county-level governmental functions as well as routine city services in one. These cities have existed since the early 1900s, but experienced a vast proliferation from the 1950s through the 1970s amid significant legal reforms and the faltering “massive resistance” to desegregation across the South. Thus, this paper examines the ways in which race and racism were linked inextricably to these changes, focusing on the independent cities and outlying counties of the Hampton Roads metropolitan region of Southeast Virginia. There, several of the largest cities in the region and the Commonwealth overall – including Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Suffolk – emerged during the desegregation era, with lasting effects upon the socioeconomic conditions of different racial groups preventing wholesale progress. In more-recent times, moreover, these and other independent cities have subtly reinforced racial hierarchies through numerous specific policies, long after the end of “massive resistance.” The paper concludes with suggestions for remedying the built-in disparities of Virginia’s independent cities across multiple dimensions of socioeconomic concern.