Gavin Wright on the Civil Rights Revolution through the eyes of an economic historian

Gavin Wright, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History, emeritus, at Stanford University, discusses his work on the economics of slavery, Black mobility patterns after the Civil War, and his thoughts on the current state of Black economies in the American South. 

In this episode, Wright and Ashenfelter discuss:

• Wright’s early life as the son of Quakers and his undergraduate career at Swarthmore. “I wanted a place with high academic standards, but something with an element of social conscience...”
• How the summer of 1963 in North Carolina, during a voting registration project, was pivotal in his career and sparked his enduring interest in slavery economics. “Obviously, we were all aware of the civil rights movement at that time, but still, it was a very remote thing to me. I'd never been in the South before, but it really was a kind of turning point for me.”
• Wright’s influential book on the economics of slavery, Reckoning with Slavery, and how it countered a controversial 1976 book which held that slavery was an efficient system that fostered high rates of economic growth in the South. 
• His research about the high rates of Black mobility after the Civil War, and his argument against the theory that high levels of geographic mobility for Black workers somehow refuted the negative impacts of systemic racism and discrimination. 
• His thoughts on the flourishing Black economies in Southern cities today. “Yeah, there's a lot of talk about reversal of the gains of the Civil Rights Revolution, and there's certainly people who are trying to move in that direction. I don't think they will be able to reverse it fully because I think both the Black community and other affected groups are not going to accept it.”

Gavin Wright earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1969. He is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History, emeritus, at Stanford University, and served as the Chair of the economics department on two occasions, 1989-1993 and 2000-2002. "The Work Goes On"—a podcast produced by Princeton's Industrial Relations Section (IR Section)—is an oral history of industrial relations and labor economics hosted by Princeton's Orley Ashenfelter.