Emancipation reversed the spatial logic of racial control from proximity to removal

Evidence

Before the Civil War, white enslavers kept Black people close at hand, in slave quarters where they could be closely monitored, in order to coerce their labor and guard against revolts. But with the abolition of slavery, the spatial relationship was reversed. Once they had no need to maintain constant watch over African Americans, white people wanted them out of sight. Public and private forces—city planners, local and state elected officials, federal housing program administrators, mortgage bankers, and real estate brokers—worked together to push African Americans into ghettos. The segregation we know today became the rule. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1195

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why segregation’s spatial form exists: monitoring before 1865, removal after — a key reframing of a familiar institution.
• XREF: connects to: Grünberg’s thousand-page thesis examined peasant emancipation in Central Europe — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 77