Intergenerational Immobility: A Legacy of Racial Violence

Abstract What are the long-run consequences of racial violence on intergenerational mobility? Do its impacts extend to the broader community? Using newly available longitudinal data covering much of the US population from 1989–2015, this study documents two results. First, it establishes a statistical association between the severity of lynching of Black Americans and long-run economic outcomes across the Southern United States. Counties that experienced racial violence most intensely in the past have lower levels of Black upward mobility today. Second, although most lynch victims were Black males, their long-run consequences are equally observable for the current generation of both Black males and females. Living in counties that experienced lynchings in the 19th and 20th centuries reduces Black upwardly mobile in the 21st century. These findings demonstrate that collective violence may hinder long-term intergenerational mobility for the broader affected community, irrespective of temporal proximity or sex.


Introduction
Elmore Bolling, a successful Black entrepreneur employing dozens of Black men and women, was lynched outside his general store in December 1947.The white mob in Lowndes County, Alabama had not accused him of a crime, nor even suspected him of one.He was murdered for being "too successful".Decades later, one of the Bollings' children, Josephine Bolling, the only one to graduate college, remarked that "there was no inheritance, nothing for my father to pass down because it was all taken away." 1 Across the United States between 1865 and 1940, a recorded 3,000 Black men, women, and children were lynched.Many more were threatened and fled for their lives.Countless communities experienced a traumatic murder marked by impunity.What are the enduring legacies of lynchings?How did the murder of Elmore Bolling impact his seven children, twenty-five grandchildren, and the broader Black community?Has past exposure to racial violence made these communities less upwardly mobile?
In this article, I empirically examine the association between lynching and Black intergenerational mobility in the Southern United States. 2 Using the latest available data on white mob lynchings of Blacks by Tolnay and Beck and anonymized longitudinal data covering almost the entire US population by Chetty, Hendren, Kline, and Saez, I show a persistent correlation between racial violence and Black upward mobility between 1989-2015. 3Analyzing data on current income from the late 20th and early 21st century, my results indicate that Blacks currently living in counties that experienced more lynchings have significantly lower rates of upward mobility compared to those living in counties with little or no occurrences of lynchings.
Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that this statistical association is observable for both males and females, suggesting that the broader community may bear the burden of past violence.Overall, these results suggest a detrimental association between lynching and the income of the current Black generation.However, it is crucial to interpret this historical pattern with caution, as potentially unmeasured confounders may be present, such as the level of historic racism in a county, which may explain lynching and mobility.
While this study cannot rule out the possibility of confounding factors responsible for the correlation, the pattern is robust across different specifications.Using a matched and weighted sample, I provide further evidence for the association between racial violence and its long-run negative outcome on Black intergenerational mobility. 4I also test potential alternative explanations.The US was subject to institutions conducive to lynching and immobility before and during the lynching era.Perhaps most important is the detrimental impact of slavery.Additionally, while the lynching era predates many of the restrictive covenants that are found to increase inequality, such as redlining, Jim Crow co-occurred with the rising use 2 I capitalize Black but not white.While there is a debate as to whether white should also be capitalized, I follow organizations such as the Associated Press and The New York Times, which argue that, in the context of race and culture, Black reflects a shared sense of identity and community.of lynching. 5These terrible institutions do not appear to confound the results.To separate the impact of lynching from the potential long-run impacts of slavery, I report results that rely only on comparing low-slaveholding counties, as well as results from regressions that control for the proportion of enslaved people.My results show that, even when these factors are controlled for, racial violence is still correlated with mobility.
I argue that the decline in intergenerational mobility is potentially attributable to a reduction in the allocation of resources to invest in future generations.We should view lynchings as a means of dampening the collective economic, political, and social independence of Blacks, a view supported by civil rights leader Ida B. Wells, white mobs disrupted investment in the exposed generation and transmitted it to subsequent Black generations.Black Americans living within the community and those who live in similar communities across the South may then develop expectations of the likelihood of violence based on their own economic activities, reproducing the disruptive effect.Where whites thwarted economic, political, and social advancement, Black communities transmit fewer resources and lower future upward mobility.
These findings make several broad contributions to research on the cost of contention, economic inequality, and historical legacies. 6First, my results continue to inform findings on the detrimental consequences of political violence and suggest that symbolic impact of violence is as significant as its severity in understanding its impact. 7Simmel perceived conflict as a dynamic process that influenced various forms of social organization. 8These 5 The term "redlining" comes from the color-coded maps produced by federal agencies.Anywhere Blacks lived, or lived nearby were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages.consequences vary depending on diverse characteristics of political violence, such as the symbolic and public display of the act and the exclusionary nature of group-based violence.Second, while past research has emphasized the negative economic nature of political violence, the findings here show that these effects may not dissipate within a few years but can be transmitted between generations. 9This study is one of the first legacy studies on lynching, to the author's knowledge, to take an intergenerational perspective using an appropriate measurement rather than studying racial disparities within a single generation. 10Third, unlike recent research on the legacy of racial violence, this study shows that both males and females are impacted, a previously unexamined dimension within this literature. 11

Violence and Economic Inequality
Political violence has devastatingly negative effects on economic growth, socioeconomic conditions, political participation, health, and education. 12When discussing the long-term impact of conflict, one of the most researched types of political violence is that of civil war. 13Findings from this literature suggest that internal conflicts do indeed augment vertical inequality-that is, between individuals.Collier and Gates, Hegre, Nygård, and Strand find that civil wars have a negative and substantial impact on growth. 14Cerra and Saxena estimate that civil wars reduce GDP growth by more than 6% for each conflict year. 15In addition to GDP, conflict impacts other aspects of economic development, such as poverty. 16tudies have also examined how mass repression and genocide continue to impact society.Studying the long-term economic consequences of the Holocaust, Acemoglu, Hassan, and Robinson find that cities in Russia today that suffered a greater level of mass murder have worse economic outcomes, measured by wages, population, and middle class. 17Also studying the Holocaust but examining the impact its beyond those directly victimized, Charnysh and Finkel find greater present day support for anti-Semitic parties within communities formerly located near death camp. 18Beyond civil war and mass repression, and particularly relevant for the US case, are the long-run consequences of repressive institutions like slavery.Slavery has been found to deeply influence economic, political, and social systems that continue into the present. 19Economically, the legacy of slavery is related to contemporary Black poverty, regional economic development, and income. 20O'Connell finds that in counties with a history of high slave concentration in 1860, Blacks have a higher level of poverty than whites. 21Other studies have examined the long-term consequences of institutions like colonialism, authoritarianism, and communism. 22o lynchings perform the same functions as these repressive institutions?Not all scholars view lynchings as forms of political violence.Some scholars have categorized them as crimes occurring in a context of popular justice, where the government is absent or too underdeveloped to provide a functioning criminal justice system.However, when considering lynchings in the US, a strong case can be made for viewing them as a form political violence.This is particularly evident when lynchings are viewed as a tool to establish a system of racial hierarchy.
Understanding lynchings of Blacks in this context aligns them with legacies of mass repression and oppressive institutions, rather than mere conflict.While lynchings share certain characteristics with some forms of political violence, their context may differ from other types of mass repression.For instance, lynching can be seen as violence committed by non-state actors, placing it alongside other forms of communal violence like anti-Jewish pogroms, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, or anti-Muslim riots in India.Unlike these cases, however, U.S. lynching often occurred with the consent of local authorities and even the participation of local law enforcement.
The characteristics of different forms of political violence may account for varying findings.
Collier and Gates, Hegre, Nygård, and Strand provide one of the most comprehensive studies on the cost of conflict, revealing how civil wars detrimentally affect the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. 23owever, they also find that post-conflict countries recover average income levels within a decade.This is in contrast to some studies related to the enduring effects of mass repression and institutions. 24In the US context, there is a growing understanding that slavery and lynching continue to impact contemporary society more than a century later. 25ivergent findings on the aftereffects of civil war compared to oppressive institutions may be rooted in their respective long-term implications.Civil wars cause a general destruction of population and infrastructure whereas lynchings alters the composition of a population.The durability of consequences may depend on the dynamics of violence and its effect on the local social structure.If violence aims to reinforce the exclusion of a group to the benefit of others, disparities may be exacerbated in the long-term.This suggests that the relationship between outcomes and violence is contingent on its exclusionary nature, a framework traced back to Simmel and further examined here.26

Historical Background
To understand the potential detrimental impact of lynching, I first review its context and causes.I aim to establish that lynchings were used to maintain control over Black people.Rather than being a response to crime, the causes of lynchings were linked to the economic, political, and social subordination of African Americans.Additionally, I seek to highlight the public nature of lynchings.Often attended by the entire white community, collective violence sent a strong signal of white immunity and Black vulnerability.I will show that lynchings served to uphold and exclusionary social structure and thus transmitted inequality across generations.
Between 1865 and 1940, lynchings claimed the lives of over 3,000 Black men, women, and children.Rare before the American Civil War of 1861 due to the monetary value of enslaved people, lynchings spiked between 1880 and 1890. 27Terrifying public and ritualistic spectacles, lynchings symbolized a violent subjection of the Black community by white society.The mob turned the act into a "symbolic rite in which the black victim became the representative of his race and, as such, was being disciplined for more than a single crime.The deadly act was a warning to black residents not to challenge the supremacy of the white race." 28 This contradicts the common narrative that Black Americans were lynched for committing a crime, especially against white women.While rape was the usual and prime justification for lynching, it was regularly used against Blacks who had "bought land, opened schools, built thriving communities, tried to organize sharecroppers' unions or opened their own businesses." 29 The damage of lynching was not limited to victims or their families.Lynching was a threat to the well-being of the broader Black community.The public nature of the murder reaffirmed white immunity and further emboldened community support for the continued upholding of a racial hierarchy. 30Quillin observed that after lynchings in several towns in Ohio, prejudice was much stronger than before. 31This took the form of whites forcing Blacks from middle-class jobs like postal carriers and locomotive firemen.In 1908, after a failed lynching and subsequent riot in Springfield, Illinois, some employers fired their black employees and many shopkeepers refused to serve Blacks. 32The aftermath of lynching also led to violent expulsion of entire communities.In Joplin, Missouri, after the 1903 lynching of Thomas Gilyard for allegedly murdering a police officer, several hundred white people ransacked the Black neighborhood, forcing more than half of Joplin's 700 Black residents to flee, leaving behind their possessions, homes, and businesses. 33The case of the Tulsa Massacre demonstrates this to a devastating effect. 34ata on the underlying causes of individual lynchings are not widely available. 35However, scholars attest to the economic, political, and social motives behind lynchings.Ida B Wells argues that lynching was an unofficial tool of the state to thwart Black economic advancement. 36Supporting this view, Eyerman argues that the leading cause of lynching was fear of Black success, stressing that "successful black men, practicing that most common American virtue, defending their economic enterprise; too successfully, it would seem… were symbolically and ritually put to death." 37iolence was used by whites to drive away tenant farmers from desirable land or to force off successful Black businessmen or landowners. 38The economic threat felt by whites may have been a response to worsening economic conditions and increased job competition, at times due to decreases in cotton prices. 39ontested political authority may also explain lynching behavior.Based on Blalock's power threat hypothesis, violence perpetrated by the dominant group against subordinate racial groups is driven by a perception that the subordinate group is contesting the dominant group's political authority.Measuring the potential for Black political rivalry by the size of a county's Black population, Reed and Corzine, Creech, and Corzine found that political competition explained cross-county variation of Black lynchings. 40Perhaps indicating the role of political competition, lynchings declined after the 1890s, in part due to restrictive voting statutes, which became more common after the turn of the century and curtailed the Black vote. 41lacks were also lynched because they were viewed as a social threat.Cook, Logan, and Parman suggest that whites feared losing their social status to Blacks and used violence to maintain social order. 42Tolnay, Deane and Beck provide evidence that lynchings were used to preserve white hegemony and the caste boundary by signaling a deadly threat to Blacks if they did not know their place. 43Lynching thus functioned to maintain white dominance.
The fact that whites deliberately targeted Black individuals to prevent their economic, political, and social advancement may continue to shape present racial disparities.Furthermore, because lynchings served to uphold an exclusionary social structure in local communities, violence may have further engendered broader detrimental outcomes across generations.The analysis tests for these economic impacts, examining whether communities that experienced lynchings generations ago have a lower level of intergenerational mobility today.

Theoretical Expectations
A large literature focuses on the US racial inequality gap and its determinants, documenting the role of family structure, income, demographics, and inheritance. 44Especially relevant to the research question addressed in this study is the reproduction of economic inequality.While there is disagreement about the transmission of inequality and its extent, there is strong evidence that there exists a high level of intergenerational transmission of economic position. 45he theoretical model underpinning this perspective, and this study, is that families transmit attributes-socioeconomic (resources) and sociocultural (practices)-to their children, which, in turn, influence their economic welfare as adults.Families decide between devoting resources to everyday consumption, accumulation of assets, or investment in the future human capital of their children.The main resources for investment in their children are parental education and family income. 46A disruption in the allocation of these resources can alter the economic welfare of adults.Many studies have found a positive and significant relationship between family background and adult economic status, an effect that disproportionately disadvantages Black families. 47Racial inequality is found to be both a consequence of wealth inequality in previous generations and different levels of racial wealth transmission across generations. 48tudies indicate that transmission of economic inequality does occur from parents to children, leading to persistent disparities across generations and contributing to the racial gap.Yet, even though violence appears to be a relevant factor, scholars have not comprehensively studied how violence exacerbates the transmission of inequality.Scheidel suggests that mass, collective violence may be one of the few forces strong enough to fundamentally alter levels of inequality in society.If this is the case, then the impact of contention in terms of transmission appears to be large. 49hy should we expect to find evidence of income disparities across Black communities exposed to violence more than half a century ago?I argue that lynchings, at the individual and family level, may generate intergenerational disparities through the reduction of paternal income, human capital, wealth, and destabilizing of family structures, effectively redirecting needed resources away from communities. 50At a structural level, lynching jeopardizes the long-term well-being of a community by creating multiple disadvantages that block access to opportunities and resources.This occurs by reaffirming institutions like segregation, generating social alienation, and disrupting aspirations. 51iolence can generate and reproduce economic disparity through the reduction of family income.At a basic level, violence removes income earners.The death of a partner can trigger an increased likelihood of persistent poverty. 52This is especially true for women.Losing a partner's income impacts women's household finances to a greater extent than the finances of men. 53Loss of income earners and its effects are particularly relevant for lynching since most victims were male.Parental loss during childhood also seems to impact status attainment in young adults. 54xposure to violence can also negatively influence human capital accumulation, specifically educational attainment, a prime driver of occupational mobility. 55Numerous studies have shown substantial differences in lifetime earnings across levels of educational attainment. 56There is an equally growing understanding that violence interrupts the learning process.Studying the effects of World War II on education and labor market outcomes for children, Ichino and Winter-Ebmer observe that, as adults, they experienced sizable earnings loss even decades after the conflict. 57In addition, there is support for the claim that harmful early-life exposures, even in utero-such as the devastation that comes with losing a family or community member to lynching-can set in motivation an accumulation of educational disadvantages. 58iolence may also disrupt and forestall the transfer of wealth across generations.Opportunities to accumulate wealth are contingent on the wealth positions of parents and grandparents.Inheritance is an especially important factor in determining differences between Black and white household wealth.Menchik and Jianakoplos suggest that intergenerational transfers might account for as much as 20% of the unexplained difference in racial wealth. 59Violence can eliminate wealth and redistribute wealth towards perpetrators, stripping future generations of the capacity to accumulate wealth. 60iolence as a signal directed to the broader Black community may have significantly reduced aspirations to undertake occupations that whites would deem "too big for the breeches" of Blacks.A similar experience occurred in Black communities after the 1921 Tulsa massacre. 61In the two decades following the massacre, the Black population of Tulsa showed declines in occupational status.
The potential detrimental effect of lynchings may transcend the town in which it occurred to impact similar communities across the South.The Savannah Tribune, a Black weekly newspaper in Georgia, ran a story of a lynching in April 1919.In that case, a white mob had shot Joe Ruffin, a wealthy black landowner, and had murdered his sons, John and Henry Ruffin, after an incident occurred during a church celebration in which two police officers were killed.After the mob killed and threw the bodies of John and Henry into the flames, they spread out and burned down Black churches, lodges, and cars.Coverage by the Savannah Tribune and other newspapers triggered a spillover effect leading to the killing of several other people across the county by justifying violence and falsely accusing Black people of crimes. 62Front-page headlines would act as a clearly communicated warning to Blacks across a county or state.
Intergenerational transmission of proscribed economic status results in Black children having less wealthy parents, on average.These children, in turn, are more likely to be downwardly mobile in terms of income. 63This fits well within the historic trauma model that scholars have proposed as a source of racial-ethnic disparities. 64Descendants who did not directly experience an event can inherit trauma-related symptoms. 65Trauma experienced by one generation is passed down, creating distrust of institutions, with adverse effects on social outcomes. 66acial violence can impact both males and females.On the one hand, it may be possible that Black males are more deeply impacted than Black females because most lynching victims are male.The lynching of Black males could be a particularly strong influence through the aspirational channel, or their orientation towards a desired future.Seeing or knowing about a lynching may have a detrimental impact on Black males and their aspiration for a better future, particularly if the event occurs at a young age. 67On the other hand, women bear the consequences of violence even if they are not the main victims. 68isparities are transmitted from parents to children through the reduction in the allocation of resources to invest in future generations.Violence engenders disparities through the eradication of income and human and financial capital.It also ensnares a community within a socioeconomic structure that prevents recovery.

Research Design
To estimate the statistical association between racial violence and intergenerational mobility, I rely on anonymized census data for almost the entire US population from 1989-2015, which links parents and children.the differences in upward mobility across counties, captured by the mean household income rank of children whose parents were at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution.It confirms to the notion of "exceeding" or "falling behind" relative to one's peers from one generation to the next.
While Chetty et al. provide different ranks, I use the mean predicted outcome for children with parents earning $25,000 (or the 25th percentile). 71I do so because it captures what they term "absolute upward mobility" or the mean income rank of children with parents in the bottom half of the income distribution.This offers an opportunity to see outcomes for children from low-income families.
To measure the severity of racial violence, I use Tolnay and Beck's dataset, which is regarded as the most comprehensive database on US lynchings. 72They define a lynching as an unlawful killing, motivated by a need for justice or upholding tradition, and carried out by three or more individuals.The main explanatory variable, the lynching rate, is the rate of Blacks lynched within a county between 1865 and 1940, based on the Black population in 1900. 73Events are recorded at the county level between 1865 and 1940 across 17 states. 74The newest iteration of their data ensures that most of the South is covered within this analysis, a feature missing in previous legacy studies.
Figure 1 shows the county-level distribution of lynching and Black upward mobility.There are two patterns worth noting.First, while a negative correlation between the maps is visible in areas such as the Mississippi Delta and Northern Florida, it is important to consider that other factors may be at play.For this reason, I include several control variables.Second, there is variation within states, with contiguous counties in some areas observing varying levels of lynching and mobility.This enables the study to identify the link between racial violence and mobility at the county level.One concern with using county data as the unit of analysis is changes to boundaries over time, with some counties being created, dissolved, or merged.To account for this, an area-weighting method is used to map historic 1860 Census data onto modern 2000 county boundaries.This  There is no standard measurement for lynchings.Some studies, such as Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen (2016) and Williams (2022), measure it as a rate, either as the number of lynchings per 100,000 total number of residents or Black residents.Others, such as Tolnay and Beck, measure the total count of lynchings.In Table C.1 in the appendix, I use different measurements of lynching to ensure that the findings are not sensitive to measurement choices.
allows for estimating the rate of Blacks murdered within contemporary counties.
To ensure that the compared units are geographically proximate and similar on many dimensions, the sample is restricted to Southern counties of the United States. 75The US exhibits significant variation in income inequality, with observable distinct regional patterns often tied to the legacy of slavery.The South has the highest poverty rate among all four regions, standing at 14.1% in 2016. 76The South accounts for nearly 80% of persistent poverty counties across the US, defined as having 20% or more of the population living in poverty for the last 30 years,. 77The South contains some of the most continuously economically depressed areas in the US. 78By restricting the sample to former Confederate states plus the border states of Missouri and Kentucky, we ensure that any variation in current inequality patterns cannot be attributed to the legacy of slavery, which distinguishes the South from other regions. 79Remaining intra-regional differences within the South,

75
The sample consists of 14 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.Oklahoma is excluded since it was not a state in 1860.such as those between the Black Belt, Mississippi Delta, and Appalachia regions, are accounted for through state-level fixed effects.
Pretreatment control variables that could have influenced lynching and may impact the outcome of interest through different paths other than lynching are also included.These variables encompass economic and demographic factors (proportion of enslaved population, total county population, Gini coefficient, total farm value, acres of improved farmland, and water and rail access), norms (proportion of free Blacks in 1860), and spatial variation indicators (county acreage, ruggedness, and latitude and longitude).Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for the main variables.
For this study, it is particularly important to control for the proportion of enslaved people and the Great Migration.Previous studies have found that slavery not only influences poverty but may also affect contemporary racial resentment, which is a potentially important confounder, though only one of many factors that influence racism today. 80Rigby and Seguin, in a study that disentangles the legacy between lynching and slavery, account for slavery by including the 1860 population of enslaved people as a control variable. 81I undertake a similar approach.During the Great  Migration between 1910 and 1970, six million Blacks defected from the rural South, with lynching being a motivating factor. 82A noticeable shift may have occurred in counties where Blacks fled due to violence, producing a divergent impact due to the self-selection of those who stayed and those who migrated.Instead of including a post-treatment measure of out-migration, I include economic "push" covariates.Prior studies have found that variables such as inequality and availability of farmland contributed to the Great Migration. 83Farmland is especially relevant as it may be tied to the Southern boll weevil infestation of the late 19th and early 20th century, which devastated cotton-growing regions in the US and may have pushed Southern Blacks to seek a better life in urban centers. 84

Results
To estimate the statistical association between past lynching and present-day intergenerational mobility in the United States, I employ two strategies.First, I analyze Black intergenerational mobility across Southern counties using ordinary least squares (OLS).Second, I analyze intergenerational mobility at the county level with a nonparametric matching and weighting method.

OLS Analysis
The baseline regression equation used throughout the analysis is the following: The dependent variable in Equation (1) is the logged income of Black children born to parents at the 25th percentile in county i, located in state j.My independent variable is racial violence (x i,j ), measured as the logged rate of lynched Blacks per county between 1865 and 1940.The term M i,j is a vector of control variables.In addition to the control variables, Equation (1) also includes a vector of regional state fixed-effects L j .I also control for spatial dependence by including Moran eigenvectors, v i,j . 85The last variable is ε i,j , an independent and identically distributed error term.My results align closely with theoretical expectations.First, the OLS results in Table 2 show that Black intergenerational mobility is lower in counties with a high level of Black lynchings.Model 1 is a bivariate model, Model 2 introduces control variables, and Model 3 includes Moran eigenvectors. 86All models show that, in counties where whites lynched more Blacks, upward mobility is lower for Blacks today.Model 2, taking into account control variables, shows that communities more exposed to lynchings are significantly associated with lower levels of intergenerational mobility. 87The coefficient estimate in model 2 (-0.022, s.e.= 0.007) suggests that a 1 standard deviation rise in the rate of lynching (1.16) is associated with a 2.5 average percentile reduction in adult income in 2015.
This result, suggesting that past lynching is correlated with contemporary Black upward mobility, is supported by anecdotal evidence of how racial violence thwarted Black economic advancement.For example, Elmore Bolling was lynched in 1947.A successful businessman, he ran a general store with a gas station, a catering business, grew crops, owned a fleet of trucks, and employed up to 40 Black people. 88It all ended when a white mob lynched him.The consequences are still felt seventy years later by his children, their children, and the broader community.Bertha Mae, the wife of Elmore Bolling, helped run the catering business but was forced to find work at a dry cleaner after his murder. 89Within two years, she fled with her children fearing for their lives, leaving behind what little they managed to hold on to.Before his death, Elmore, mindful of the Analyses, " Ecology 87, no. 10 (2006): 2603-2613.

86
Full results for all models presented in this study, including estimates for covariates, can be found in the appendix.I report the main results in Table A.1.87   In the appendix, I report results based on different measures of the main independent variable.Table C.1 shows that results do not change when lynchings are measured as a rate per 10,000 Black residents or as a count.I also report results from different definitions of the South and find that the results are still significant.See Table D importance of education, placed his oldest children, Louis and Elmore Jr., in schools open year-round.After the lynching of their father, the older children dropped out to help support the family.Of the seven siblings, only one graduated from college.Among the 25 grandchildren of Elmore and Bertha Mae, only six graduated from college. 90In the Bolling case, his murder affected the expectations, aspirations, and economic decisions of his children.Most worked primarily as low-paid laborers. 91t is possible that unobserved characteristics shared by counties are influencing the results.For example, it may be the case that locations with lower rates of upward mobility tend to cluster together, and the models do not take this into account.Figure 1 confirms that this is a possibility.To control for spatial dependence, I re-estimated Model 2 by including Moran eigenvectors that act as synthetic covariates capturing residual autocorrelation. 92My results, reported in Model 3, show that mobility is consistently lower in counties that experienced more lynchings.
Having established a historical correlation between past lynching and contemporary intergenera-tional mobility, I turn to examining the gendered dimensions of racial violence.As I report in Table 3, both Black males and females living in counties that experienced lynchings in the 19th and 20 th centuries became less upwardly mobile in the 21st century.The magnitude of the coefficient for males (-0.034, s.e.= 0.008) implies that a one standard deviation rise in lynch rate is associated with a 3.9 percentile decrease in upward mobility in 2015.For females the quantitative effects implied by the estimates are smaller.The estimate in  column 2 (-0.012, s.e.= 0.006) suggests that a 1 standard deviation rise in the rate of lynching is associated with a 1.4 percentile reduction in adult income today.More than 90% of lynching victims were Black men and boys.When women and girls were lynched, it was often because their male relatives could not be found or because women attempted to intervene in the lynchings of men.While there are differences in both the number and immediate reasons for the lynching of Black men and women, the finding that both are impacted decades later is significant evidence of the devastating legacy of violence across the broader Black community.

Matching and Weighting Analysis
One potential problem with the analysis above is that of model dependence, or that different models can lead to different conclusions about the same data and thereby call into question its validity.I undertake a non-parametric matching method analysis to improve balance between treatment and covariate distribution, which makes estimates based on analyses less dependent on modeling specifications. 93Treatment refers to a dichotomized version of the continuous lynch rate measurement, where 1 indicates a county lynch rate greater than 0 between 1865 and 1940.Control counties have no record of a lynching during the same time frame. 94Matching, as a method of data preprocessing, pairs treated cases with similar control cases to separate the effect from shared background covariates. 95This has the advantage of reducing estimate bias and model dependency by removing control observations with no comparable case among treated cases. 96I used genetic matching to create a sample of counties in which lynching was about equally likely to occur. 97Model 1 in Table 4 reports results of the matched data sample.The findings provide further evidence of an association between past violence and lower future Black upward mobility.
I also generate balancing weights for the continuous treatment.Dichotomizing a continuous treatment may lead to a loss of information based on the propensity of a lynching occurring. 101If no difference exists between counties that experienced lynchings and those that did not in low or non-slaveholding counties, then that would provide evidence that slavery, rather than lynching, may be driving the results.
Tolnay and Beck's data does not cover Northern states.I include Seguin and Rigby's data set of lynching in the US, which follows a data generating process similar to that of Tolnay and Beck. 102OLS results from the matched sample using an expanded measure of lynchings, available in Table E.1 in the online appendix, show that findings are robust to restricting the analysis to comparable low and non-slaveholding counties. 103This suggests that results are unlikely to be solely attributable to the legacy of slavery.
Another possible explanation for the main results is the institution of Jim Crow.It was one of the most severe institutional forms of discrimination in the US during the 19th and 20th century.As soon as the Civil War ended, former Confederate states passed laws to severely limit the rights of Black Americans.Between 1890 and 1910, Southern states devised numerous ways to confine Blacks politically and economically. 104his could affect the analysis by potentially confounding the results in Table 2. Southern whites controlled Black life through Jim Crow until 1965.Furthermore, the effects of institutional discrimination can increase economic inequality. 105To test the robustness of the results, I restrict the temporal scope of lynchings from 1865 to 1877, or the end of Reconstruction.This enables the study to estimate the effects of lynching prior to many of the restrictive covenants that increased inequality, including Jim Crow, as well as other institutional forms of discrimination such as redlining.Restricting the temporal frame of lynching does not change its estimated effect, as shown in Table F.1 in the appendix.Therefore, results in Table 2 are unlikely to be solely attributable to Jim Crow.
I also examine lynchings during different periods.It is possible that violence during different eras has more or less impact on mobility.For example, violence immediately following the Civil War may have a larger influence, damping future Black mobility at a critical moment for formerly enslaved people.It could also be the case that recent lynchings are more 101 See Appendix E for a fuller discussion of the legacy of slavery, assessment of balance, and full results.relevant since they occurred within living memory.Findings, reported in Table F.1 in the appendix, show that lynchings reduce Black upward mobility for each of the selected time periods: Reconstruction (1865-1877), before the Great Migration/rise of Jim Crow (1877-1910), and during the first phase of the Great Migration (1910-1940).While it is possible to divide 80 years into different periods, these time frames seem fitting as important and distinct within American history.This also serves as a call for future research to further examine the role and impact of racial violence across time periods.
It is possible that the findings are due to a rural/urban divide.Lynchings tended to occur in rural counties, and these counties may remain more rural today than counties with little or no incidents.At the same time, rural counties tend to be less wealthy than more urban ones. 106To test this plausible explanation, I drop counties with the highest population density in 1860.Removing the top ten percentile of historically urban counties does not change the estimated effect of lynching.Results, reported in Table G.1 in the appendix, suggest that the findings are unlikely to be due to the low population density of violent counties.

Conclusion
Using contemporary mobility and historical lynching data, this article documents a statistical association between past violence and generational economic outcomes in the United States.My results suggest that counties that experienced lynchings have lower levels of Black intergenerational mobility today.This finding is supported through OLS analysis as well as a matched and weighted sample.Additionally, I find that lynching impacts later generations regardless of sex, providing further evidence that lynching affected the broader Black community.
While there may be other factors at play, I can comfirm the overall negative pattern between lynching and upward mobility even after considering other possible alternative explanations such as slavery and Jim Crow.Detecting a statistical relationship should be particularly difficult when it comes to identifying why Black Americans are significantly and consistently less upwardly mobile than white Americans, considering the multitude of potential contributing causes.Twelve generations of institutionalized enslavement eradicated wealth from one generation to the next, and new forms of discrimination propagated disadvantages.Whether it was disenfranchisement, redlining, or land dispossession, 106 Ann R. Tickamyer and Cynthia M. Duncan, "Poverty and Opportunity Structure in Rural America, " Annual Review of Sociology 16, no. 1 (1990): 67-86.
enduring structural barriers continue to prevent Black economic equality.Violence played a significant and persistent role in producing this robust pattern.
The findings have important implications for research on how violence shapes inequality in the long run.Firstly, the results suggest that violence can exacerbate not only vertical but also horizontal levels of inequality, impacting communities over a generational timescale.Even less severe cases of violence, compared to Stalin's repression or the Holocaust, may lead to enduring consequences, prompting scholars to consider symbolic and economic impact of violence as well as its severity.Of particular significance is the exclusionary nature of violence perpetrated by one group against another.Beyond the US, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland offers a potential case study.Today, Belfast's Catholic community faces greater deprivation compared to Protestants, a possible legacy of the Troubles. 107Secondly, the findings advance our understanding of the theoretical mechanisms behind transmission, suggesting that violence can influence the amount, timing, and nature of a community's investment in the next generation.
There are limitations to the findings.I cannot completely rule out the possibility that these statistical associations are caused by other factors.While the overall pattern appears to be robust to alternative variations, there remain unmeasured plausible explanations, such as racism.The study only examines contemporary economic disparity, which limits its ability to speak to the short-term effects of violence.The effect closer to the event remains unknown and is a subject for future research.The theory and analysis suggest a compounding effect, particularly since racial violence and its trauma often go unaddressed in any meaningful way.Examining short-term effects could also help reduce the risk of potential confounding variables when studying consequences.Lastly, I excluded other types of racial violence from consideration, potentially omitting contributing sources.Outside of lynching, the US has a long history of racial violence, including race massacres such as those that took place in Chicago during the Red Summer of 1919, and the forced removal of Blacks through violence or threat of violence from towns across the US.If the effect of lynching is consistent with other types of racial violence, the reported historical correlation may be an underestimation.
The results suggest a greater need to broaden how we address inequality.In the US, most policies focus on alleviating hardships stemming from inequality.These programs are undoubtedly part of the solution, but addressing past violence must be a point of discussion.Part of this process 107 David Capener."Belfast's housing policy still reflects religious and economic division." The Guardian (2017).
is remembrance.Remembrance adds to a more complete picture of the Black struggle for equality in the US but also suggests a path for addressing one of its most endemic problems.Remembrance, public discourse, and reconciliation can move the past out of history and towards addressing its legacy.

27Ron Eyerman ,
Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2001) 28 Howard Smead, Blood Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988), 21 29 Nikole Hannah-Jones, "What is Owed, " NY Times Magazine June 24, 2020, 20. 30 Tolnay and Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 31 Frank Uriah Quillin, The Color Line in Ohio: A History of Race Prejudice in a Typical Northern State (London: Forgotten Books, 2018) 32 Nancy C Curtis, Black Heritage Sites: An African American Odyssey and Finder's Guide (Chicago: American Library Association, 1996) Created by Chetty et al., the dataset links census data (specifically the 2000 and 2010 American Community Survey) to federal income tax returns from 1989-2015. 69Children and parents are matched by linking them to parents who first claimed them as dependents on tax returns.By targeting children born between 1978-1983 in the US or authorized immigrants who arrived in the US during childhood, they were able to analyze 20 million children, covering approximately 94% of the target sample.Chetty et al. measure intergenerational mobility through income percentile ranks. 70They rank children against other children within their birth cohort and parents against other parents.For parents, they use pre-tax household incomes, specifically the mean adjusted gross income from 1994-2000.For children, born between 1978 and 1983, they use pre-tax incomes measured in 2014-2015.Household income is defined as the combined income of an individual and their spouse.In this study, I examine the pooled outcome for Black individuals, as well as separate analyses for males and females.Intergenerational mobility is measured as 67 Marilyn Metzler, Melissa T. Merrick, Joanne Klevens, Katie A. Ports, and Derek C. Ford, "Adverse Childhood Experiences and Life Opportunities: Shifting the Narrative, " Children and Youth Services Review 72 (2017): 141-149.68 Eran Bendavid, Ties Boerma, Nadia Akseer, Ana Langer, Espoir Bwenge Malembaka, Emelda A. Okiro, Paul H. Wise, Sam Heft-Neal, Robert E Black, Zulfiqar A Bhutta, "The Effects of Armed Conflict on the Health of Women and Children, " The Lancet 397, no.10273 (2021): 522-532.69 Chetty et al., "Where is the Land of Opportunity?The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States." 70 ibid , A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930; Lisa D. Cook, "Converging to a National Lynching Database: Recent Developments and the Way Forward, " Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 45, no. 2 (2012): 55-63. 73

76
Jessica L. Semega, Kayla R. Fontenot, and Melissa A.Kollar, "Income and Poverty in the United States: 2016, " Current Population Reports: 10-11.77 U.S. Department of Agriculture.Economic Research Service, "Geography of Poverty, " 2017.Retrieved from https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-poverty-well-being/geography-ofpoverty.aspx78 Ronald C. Wimberley, "It's Our Most Rural Region; It's the Poorest; It's the Black Belt South; and it Needs Our Attention, " Journal of Rural Social Sciences 25 no.7 (2010).79 To ensure that results are not sensitive to the definition of the South, I expand and restrict the states considered part of the South.See Table D.1 in the appendix.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Historical lynching and Black intergenerational mobility in Southern uS. the figure on the left shows the mean predicted outcome for Black children with parents at the 25th percentile in the national household income distribution.darker areas are those of lower social mobility.the right panel shows the count of lynched Blacks.counties in white have insufficient data for mobility or no recorded lynching.

80O'
Connell, "The Impact of Slavery on Racial Inequality in Poverty in the Contemporary US South"; Acharya et al., "The Political Legacy of American Slavery." 81 Rigby, David, and Charles Seguin, "Capital punishment and the legacies of slavery and lynching in the United States, " The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 694, no. 1 (2021): 205-219.

93
Ho et al., "Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference." A more detailed discussion on the matched sample is available in Appendix B. 94 I dichotomize the lynch rate variable to utilize more well-established propensity score techniques that are not as well suited to continuous treatments.95 Ho et al., "Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference." 96 King and Zeng, "The Dangers of Extreme Counterfactuals." 97 I report mean differences before and after matching in Figure B.1 in the appendix.

102Charles
Seguin and David Rigby, "National Crimes: A New National Data Set of Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941, " Socius 5 (2019).In Appendix E, I include a brief discussion of key differences between both data sets.

Table 3 .
impact of lynching on Males and Females.