So off the bat, I know the North East of the US has more historical economic development than that of the South as countless immigrants worked their way into the US via Ellis Island and the like...
That being said, we know that the South of the US is far more economically depressed than that of their northern brethren.
Has there been any studies, papers, etc. that can point to the South's history of racism being a component of its lack of economic progress? More to the point, is it the general unwelcoming attitude of the South that caused it, did companies/industries refuse to do business there, ect.?
The primary cause of the South being so far behind economically goes back beyond a century ago, in that slavery caused a reliance on agricultural and labor based economics. Therefore, the South was late to industrialization and urbanization that the North experienced, leading to them being further behind than the North through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and into the future. Of course, they would diversify the economy over time, but the main reason the South would be behind for so long was due to the single-variation economy where plantations and slaves ruled the economy. So, I suppose this is “general racism,” but doesn’t necessarily answer your question about Jim Crow laws halting economic growth.
During the Jim Crow period, most laws that didn’t deal with separation and segregation were written in race-neutral terms in fact, and were simply enforced more harshly against black people by police and state workers. These laws didn’t necessarily have incredibly adversy effects on the economy like slavery and pre-Reconstruction laws had. In fact, a study conduced in the late 70s decided that had every newly free slave been given 40 acres of land and a mule, as promised by the Freedmen’s Bureau, it still wouldn’t have been enough to close the vast wealth gap caused by slavery and white dominance in the region. The lack of even this led to wealthy families owning the majority of Southern money whereas the rest of the laborers struggled to find industrial jobs and ended up working for the same people they were just slaves of, quite often.
So, in short, Jim Crow laws had little bearing on the economy relative to what had happened before, and it’s hard to say whether they would if we had a control situation where both groups were equal. Since the majority of black people were incredibly disadvantaged, coming out of slavery at the time it’s hard to tell if the Jim Crow laws had any effect at all.
DeCanio, S.J., (1979). Accumulation and discrimination in the postbellum South. Explorations in Economic History, 16(2), 182–206.
Darity Jr, W. & Nicholson, M.J., (2005). Racial wealth inequality and the Black family. In African American family life: ecological and cultural diversity. New York, NY: Guilford Press, pp. 78–85.