The demographic impact of "white flight"?

[Docere]

The "white flight" era in the US runs from roughly 1945 to maybe 1980. Suburbanization of course continued after that interested here. But interested here primarily in the first "generation" or so of postwar suburbanization.

How much of an overall decline was there in the white population?

Was suburbanization determined more by push (i.e. fear of minorities, declining property values etc.) or pull (i.e. genuine appeal of suburbia) factors?

How did the racial and ethnic map change of the city over this period?

Were there sections in city limits that saw significant increases in their white populations or were they fully built out?

Did white ethnic groups move in a concentrated fashion to outlying neighborhoods and suburbs and create new enclaves, or was it pretty much a homogeneous "white American" mass?

Who took part in this migration? Were some groups slower to move?


Obviously there is huge variation - most notably the sheer size of Black (and in some cases Hispanic) migration, age of the city and so on.

[Crawford]

Almost every non-Southern city proper was 90%+ (often 95%+) white at the close of WW2, and almost every non-suburban annexing city proper was majority nonwhite by the 1980's. So it was a pretty dramatic change in roughly 40 years. The last 35 years have been comparably stable.

[Docere]

That's the big picture, yes. Would be interesting to get assessment of different cities in this period.

I use 1980 as the rough cutoff. The Great Migration ended around 1970. Probably more population declines in the 1970s than any other decade.

[eschaton]

As I said before, I believe that fundamentally, white flight encompassed two different eras.

During the first era, from about 1945 to 1960 or so, white people were leaving the city. However, they were not leaving the city due to black people really. They were leaving for a host of reasons, but mostly because due to the near cessation of residential construction between 1929 and 1944 cities were horribly overcrowded and expensive for what you could get. Not to mention polluted. The suburbs opened up, and home ownership was relatively affordable for the first time in U.S. history. Due to the incredibly racist nature of U.S. housing policy at the time, black people were essentially excluded from these new suburbs, but otherwise, to the extent they could have afforded them, they would have "fled" into these suburbs in just the same way that white people did.

It's only really after around 1960 that you see white people fleeing the city because "the city is bad" rather than "the suburbs are good." That's when the urban riots phase of U.S. history kicks into high gear, and you see a lot of busing in urban school districts which leads to a lot of white families leave cities entirely rather than have their children attend integrated schools.

[Docere]

I'm guessing the immediate postwar suburbanization is skewed toward the more affluent (in some ways just an expanded version of earlier in the century - there were a lot more affluent people in 1950 than in the first half of the century to take part), with the working class share picking up after 1960 or so.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by eschaton

As I said before, I believe that fundamentally, white flight encompassed two different eras.

I'm not sure I totally buy this. There was 1945-1960-era white flight, but usually within the city proper. In fact there was earlier white flight.

For example, the Detroit Jewish community was centered around 12th Street before WW2, and then vacated to Dexter Davison area by the 1940's, as the black community grew. They were out of Dexter Davison by the late 1950's, again replaced by the black community. The community was then in NW Detroit, around the Bagley neighborhood, until about 1970. The community was then centered in suburban Oak Park/Southfield, until about 1990. Now in West Bloomfield. In every move, the black community follows a few years later. West Bloomfield will probably be plurality black within a few years; the schools are already there.

Of course the push-pull factors are complex. It wasn't like Jews were fleeing in terror or something; they were replaced by upper middle class blacks in all these phases, and many of the legacy Jewish neighborhoods are among the more desirable in Detroit proper. But the suburban trends of the last 40 years aren't that different than the earlier city-proper trends; just a bit more gradual.

And I do think there was a degree of racial anxiety. The Jewish community is extremely education-oriented, and the best high schools in Detroit follow the community's migration path. It was Northern High in the 1940's, Central High in the 1950's, Mumford High in the 1960's, and then suburban high schools. Each was tied to a particular era of outstanding Jewish scholarship, followed by a period of anxiety following middle class black growth, and then mass flight.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There was 1945-1960-era white flight, but usually within the city proper.

I'm certain that there was plenty of white flight to other areas within the city proper in most northern cities. Though there was also definitely a ton of white flight to the surrounding townships, boroughs, etc. in the postwar period.

I mean, the 1950s and 60s was the golden era for production homebuilders in northern metros. That's when entire regional landscapes dramatically changed from a city and nearby satellite towns surrounded by farm and forest lands and connected by arterial state highways... to the "grid extension" of the city into those former rural areas which engulfed the hinterlands into the urbanized sphere.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I'm certain that there was plenty of white flight to other areas within the city proper in most northern cities. Though there was also definitely a ton of white flight to the surrounding townships, boroughs, etc. in the postwar period.

Right. Central Harlem was a white neighborhood, and then almost completely changed over in about a decade in the 1920's, as blacks moved northward from what is now Lincoln Center and Penn Station areas. That was early white flight.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'm not sure I totally buy this. There was 1945-1960-era white flight, but usually within the city proper. In fact there was earlier white flight.

The borough of Queens grew quite quickly in the postwar period, particularly central and eastern Queens. There wasn't much of a Jewish population in Queens before WWII, but it was about a quarter Jewish in the 1950s and 1960s.

And they would have been leaving neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn that were becoming Black and Puerto Rican, to a large degree.

[Docere]

Interestingly Queens grew at a similar rate as Westchester between 1940 and 1970 (53% and 56%, respectively).

Bronx is of course smaller than Queens and hence filled up faster.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

The borough of Queens grew quite quickly in the postwar period, particularly central and eastern Queens. There wasn't much of a Jewish population in Queens before WWII, but it was about a quarter Jewish in the 1950s and 1960s.

And they would have been leaving neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn that were becoming Black and Puerto Rican, to a large degree.

Right. A lot of those mid-century Jewish neighborhoods in Central Queens, places like Rego Park, Forest Hills and Kew Gardens, were likely upwardly mobile Jews leaving increasingly black-hispanic neighborhoods, probably in North Brooklyn.

Places like Williamsburg, Crown Heights and Bed Stuy were very (secular) Jewish until the postwar years.

And in the North Bronx, Co-Op City, completed in the late 1960's, was initially almost entirely Jewish. Residents were almost all from the South/Central Bronx neighborhoods along the Concourse. Post-1970, only the elderly Jews remained along the Concourse.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Right. Central Harlem was a white neighborhood, and then almost completely changed over in about a decade in the 1920's, as blacks moved northward from what is now Lincoln Center and Penn Station areas. That was early white flight.

Yeah, it's interesting how movements of ethnic groups within cities proper mirrored each other prewar, with the example of Jews and Blacks like you cited earlier in the case of Detroit, and in Harlem and Brooklyn, Bronx neighborhoods.

Similarly, in Pittsburgh, the Lower Hill District was the center of Jewish life in the city from the 1870s until it began to diversify by the late 1920s, as Jews migrated to the East End neighborhoods (Oakland, East Liberty, and Squirrel Hill). The Hill District became "Little Harlem" and was 80% Black by the late 1950s... when the entire Lower Hill neighborhood began to be leveled in a mass urban renewal/highway project.

[Docere]

From Beyond the Melting Pot, a sociological classic about NYC ethnic groups in the 1960s:

In the thirties, the following areas of New York City had very high Jewish proportions: the Lower East Side and Washington Heights in Manhattan; the Hunts Point, West Bronx, Morrisania, Fordham, and Pelham Parkway areas in the Bronx; and Brownsville, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Borough Park, Flatlands, East New York, Bensonhurst, and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. All of these were at least two-fifths Jews, and large sections within them were four-fifths and nine-tenths Jewish.

One of the areas of densest concentration in the city today is the Forest Hills-Rego Park area, which consists almost entirely of new apartment houses. It is two-thirds Jewish, compared to only 5 per cent in 1930. The Jewish concentration in some other new areas is hardly less striking. The Bayside-Oakland Gardens, Central Queens, and Douglaston-Little Neck-Bellerose areas are two-fifths Jewish or more, although almost no Jews lived in them in 1940. Since the Second World War, Jews have moved from one concentrated Jewish area only to create new ones - and largely out of their own desires.

[Crawford]

I forgot about Brownsville.

Brownsville, Brooklyn was probably one of the biggest Jewish concentrations on earth until the 1950's. By the mid-60's, almost entirely black/Hispanic. I bet many ended up in Queens.

Adjacent East NY too. Was heavily Jewish until about 1970. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein grew up in public housing in East NY. Adjacent Canarsie still has a handful of elderly Jews.

[Docere]

While slower to move than Jews, Italians were on the move as well in the 1950s. East Harlem was still the biggest Italian concentration in NYC in 1940, but by the 1950s it was "Spanish Harlem" - the biggest Puerto Rican concentration on the US mainland.

Given their tendency to "defend the neighborhood" it's interesting that East Harlem ceased to be Italian so quickly.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Docere

The "white flight" era in the US runs from roughly 1945 to maybe 1980. Suburbanization of course continued after that interested here. But interested here primarily in the first "generation" or so of postwar suburbanization.

Non-Hispanic white flight in Detroit actually didn't end until 2010 (2020 will likely show the first increase since 1950). The last wave of white flight was made up of municipal workers who were not allowed to live outside of the city limits until the mid-1990s, and the elderly who stayed until they died. Between 1950 and 1990, Detroit went from 83% white to 21% white. By 2010, the city was down to 10% non-Hispanic white.

• White (non-Hispanic) population change 1950-2010: -1.47M
• Black population change 1950-2010: +290K*
• *Black population change 1950-2000: +475K

I think it's interesting that between 1950 and 1990 in Detroit, for every 1 black person increase the city decreased by 3 whites. Obviously, this doesn't neatly explain some of the replacement theories behind white flight, as there were never enough black people coming in to absorb the real estate being left behind.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Docere

I'm guessing the immediate postwar suburbanization is skewed toward the more affluent (in some ways just an expanded version of earlier in the century - there were a lot more affluent people in 1950 than in the first half of the century to take part), with the working class share picking up after 1960 or so.

I don't think this is actually the case. The immediately-built postwar suburban developments tended to be pretty modest homes with small sizes, and tended to be marketed towards working and lower-middle class folks. Which makes sense - these were the people who were crowded into poor neighborhoods, often continuing to live with their parents after the war due to lack of available units. The rich urban neighborhoods weren't as overcrowded (except where they were going downscale and houses were getting chopped up), and there were plenty of suburban-ish prewar housing stock for the upper and upper-middle classes.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Docere

Given their tendency to "defend the neighborhood" it's interesting that East Harlem ceased to be Italian so quickly.

Italians in America, by and large, always seem to be among the first of the large, turn of the century European immigrant groups to seek "greener pastures".

[Crawford]

And, until the late 60's, more or less, the suburbs tended to be cheaper. They were the sticks, with underfunded schools, iffy roads, limited city water/sewer. Except for some wealthy commuter enclaves, most new suburbanites were seeking value and space, not good schools or services.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

While slower to move than Jews, Italians were on the move as well in the 1950s. East Harlem was still the biggest Italian concentration in NYC in 1940, but by the 1950s it was "Spanish Harlem" - the biggest Puerto Rican concentration on the US mainland.

Given their tendency to "defend the neighborhood" it's interesting that East Harlem ceased to be Italian so quickly.

East Harlem still has a tiny handful of Italians, and a number of businesses, on the eastern fringes. I think it had a sizable Italian population till the 1970's or so.

Spanish and Italian Harlem existed simultaneously. I think east of Park was more Italian than Hispanic till at least 1960 or so. The Metro North line divided the neighborhood.

Jewish and Irish Harlem existed till the 1960's too. West Harlem, north of Columbia, was Jewish/Irish. Really only Central Harlem was black pre-1970. Actually I'm not sure if the Broadway corridor in Harlem was ever plurality black, as Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans were established once the Irish and Jews left. The AA population was never huge west of Amsterdam Ave., I think.