Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever? Racial and Economic Isolation and Dissimilarity in Rural Black Belt Schools in Alabama*

Abstract

School racial and economic segregation trends in the United States have increased since the high point of school integration in the 1980s. Current scholarship rarely examines segregation trends in rural areas, especially in the rural Black Belt region of the southern United States. The Black Belt was the location of the leading events of the Civil Rights Movement and where white residents exhibited overt and violent resistance to Brown v. Board of Education. This landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case prohibited legally mandated racial segregation in schools. Our study examines patterns of racial and economic isolation and dissimilarity in the Alabama Black Belt to determine the contemporary nature of school and neighborhood segregation in the region. We use a Critical Race Spatial Analysis framework to conceptualize the study, and we show that segregation patterns have continued and, in some cases, worsened in the last three decades. The forces driving these patterns are different from in the past, stemming from student population changes rather than students' distribution within school districts. Based on these findings, we explain solutions that include implementing school enrollment policy changes alongside policies that incentivize population growth and economic development.