White flight repeated itself from suburbs into 95-percent-white exurbs

Evidence

As had happened inside the city, suburban whites’ abandonment of racially diverse schools signaled a new phase of white flight. This time around, whites fled from the inner-ring suburbs just outside the city to the outer-ring “exurbs” in the counties beyond. Migration to these regions mirrored not just the tone of earlier white flight, but the tempo as well. In the 1980s the white exodus from Atlanta had helped make Cobb and Gwinnett two of the nation’s fastest-growing counties; in the 1990s white flight from Atlanta’s suburbs did the same for three exurban counties. Forsyth County, north of Gwinnett, had a 123 percent increase in its population over the decade, making it the second fastest-growing county in the United States. Henry County, just south of DeKalb, was fourth in the nation, while Paulding County, west of Cobb, placed seventh. As with the initial surge in the suburban population, this new explosion of exurban population growth was almost completely white. Forsyth, for instance, stood at 95 percent white in 2000, just as Gwinnett had been in 1970, and only 0.7 percent black. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 589

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Small residential minority increases greatly amplify into public school resegregation — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 588; White flight developed independently in cities across both North and South — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 37; New housing developments reliably produce Republican voting enclaves — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 590 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Interstate-funded suburbanization triggered mass white flight that undercut urban renewal #expands (0.85) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1201
• A single expressway’s noise and decline triggered cascading white flight and urban decay #expands (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 3722