Tug-of-War: Political Mobilization and Access to Schooling in the Southern Racial State

Drawing on the resource mobilization framework and James's concept of the southern racial state, this article examines the mechanisms that influenced access to federal vocational programs in the predesegregation South. It explores how local political conditions in 311 counties in three southern states affected training opportunities in federal vocational programs by race, independently of economic factors. It shows that access to these programs was shaped by racially segregated labor markets and that African Americans' access was shaped by the political dimension of the southern racial state. Moreover vocational programs for African Americans did not just depend on the political mobilization of elites (polity members), as classic resource mobilization arguments suggest. Rather, black indigenous organizations provided the institutional basis that increased African Americans' access to these programs.