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Title: The Shadow and Blight of Slavery: How Long did the Advantages of Free Land Persist?
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2009
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Abstract: In a previous paper, I found that free land positively and significantly affected the economic outcomes of the Cherokee freedmen, a group of former slaves who received land. In this paper, I extend the analysis by twenty years to 1900. Using a newly collected linked census sample, I find that the Cherokee freedmen’s advantages seemed to persist. First, I focus my analysis solely on the Cherokee Nation and construct measures of intra- and inter- generational occupational mobility. I find high degrees of occupational persistence and upward mobility for Cherokee freedmen. Next, I combine my sample of linked Cherokee freedmen with the 1% Public Use Microdata Sample of the 1900 United States Census with American Indian Oversample (IPUMS). I compare the outcomes of Cherokee freedmen to 2 control groups—blacks in the South and residents of the Oklahoma and Indian Territories. I find evidence that the Cherokee freedmen children have higher levels of human capital accumulation than black children both in the South and the Territories. Additionally, Cherokee freedmen adults tend to have higher literacy rates, are more likely to own their own homes, and are more likely to be farmers. Finally, by incorporating whites and Cherokees from the IPUMS sample into the analysis, I measure the levels of racial inequality in the Cherokee Nation and the South. As in my earlier paper, I find evidence that the level of racial inequality is smaller in the Cherokee Nation than in the South.
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Authors: Miller, Melinda
Publisher: U.S. Naval Academy
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Race and Ethnicity
Countries: United States