Tuesdays at APA: The Plight of Black Coastal Land Owners in the Sunbelt South

The Plight of Black Coastal Landowners in the Sunbelt South and
Its Lessons for Post–Housing Bubble America
April 26, 2011


At the turn of the 20th century, African Americans owned vast
swaths of property along America's shores. By the post–World War
II era, African American beaches and resorts served as important
places for working families to escape from the daily indignities
of Jim Crow and for a separate, seasonal black leisure economy to
take shape. The death of Jim Crow coincided with the emergence of
a pro-growth, corporate-friendly Sunbelt economy, which led to
massive resort and residential development in coastal areas, and
the targeting of black coastal landowners as the path of least
resistance.


From the 1960s to the present, African American property owners
in areas targeted for leisure-based economic and real estate
development have struggled to fend off various schemes deployed
by developers and their allies in municipal, county, and state
governments to expropriate and put to "best use" valuable
property.


Andrew Kahrl from Marquette University examined the legal
instruments of real estate development, black land loss, and the
privatization of public space in coastal areas in modern America,
its relation to broader changes in the coastal and global
economies, and its social and environmental implications.