Did Retail Enterprise Among White Immigrants Benefit from the Residential Segregation of Blacks? A Study of Large Northern Cities in the Early 20th Century*

Abstract

Objective. This study tests the proposition, suggested by the middleman minority theory of entrepreneurship, that retail enterprise among white immigrants in the urban North was aided by the emergence of segregated black communities during the Great Migration of 1915–1930.Methods. Census data on major Northern cities in 1910, 1920, and 1930 are analyzed in several multivariate regressions.Results. The merchant participation rate of foreign‐born white men was unrelated to the index of black spatial isolation but was positively associated with the relative size of the black population, implying that the existence of large black consumer markets did promote the entry of the immigrants into the retail trade.Conclusions. White immigrants in the early 20th century North had a retailing niche based partly on serving blacks. Yet, there was no evidence that the immigrants benefited from a “captive market” that arose because of residential segregation by race.