Collaborative Research: Southern Lynchings and Children's Educational Outcomes

儿童环境中的压力源，以及其他因素，可能会对儿童的教育成就以及其他可能的结果产生重大不利影响。接触暴力，特别是针对儿童自己的人口、社会或信仰社区的暴力，可能是严重的环境压力来源。19世纪末和20世纪初，种族动机暴力的模式普遍存在，特别是在南方。该项目将使用20世纪初密西西比州新数字化的历史记录来研究私刑如何影响当地黑人儿童及其家庭的教育选择。这项研究将把县一级的私刑数据与密西西比州1927至1957年间每个儿童的详细入学和出勤记录结合起来。这一详细的数据集，以及私刑的外源性性质，将使研究人员能够确定私刑如何影响儿童的教育结果。鉴于教育在美国减少不平等和实现种族平等方面的关键重要性，确定私刑对教育水平的影响可以提高我们对20世纪中后期南方黑人-白人不平等演变的理解。因此，研究结果可以指导改善少数族裔教育成果的政策，从而缩小美国的种族成就差距。该项目将数字化并将密西西比州可教育儿童列举(1850-1892；1908-1957)联系起来，这是密西西比州教育部新发现的一组记录，用于向各县的州教育资金分配提供信息。这些记录包括从1927年到1957年每两年一次的密西西比州每两年一次的入学情况和出勤率，以及关于居住城镇、学校就读和兄弟姐妹联系的信息。利用这些独特的记录，私人投资调查将构建一个衡量历史教育程度的指标，该指标将比1940年和1950年十年一次的人口普查中自我报告的教育程度变量更准确。构建的数据将使PI能够观察到在他们的社区发生私刑时，哪些儿童已经完成了他们的学业。PI将使用密西西比州的私刑数据和构建的教育程度数据来评估私刑对研究期间发生私刑的社区中不同种族群体的教育程度的因果影响。研究结果可以指导改善少数族裔教育成果的政策，从而缩小美国的种族成就差距。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Stressors in a child’s environment, among other things, can have significant adverse effect on the child’s educational attainment, as well as other possible outcomes. Exposure to violence, especially violence targeted at the child’s own demographic, social or faith community, can be a severe environmental stressor. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw widespread patterns of racially motivated violence, particularly in the South. This project will use newly digitized historical records from early 20th century Mississippi to study how lynchings affected the educational choices of local Black children and their families using. The research will combine county level lynching data with detailed school enrolment and attendance record of every child in Mississippi from 1927 to 1957. This detailed data set, and the exogenous nature of lynchings will allow the researchers to identify how lynchings affect children’s educational outcomes. Given the critical importance of education in reducing inequality and progressing toward racial equity in the U.S., identifying how exposure to lynchings affected educational attainment can improve our understanding of the evolution of Black-White inequality in the mid- to late-20th century South. The research results can therefore guide policies to improve educational outcomes of racial minorities, hence narrow the racial achievement gaps in the US.This project will digitize and link the Mississippi Enumeration of Educable Children, 1850-1892; 1908-1957, a newly discovered set of records created by the Mississippi Department of Education to inform allocation of state education funding across counties. These records include the school enrollment and attendance status for every child in Mississippi, biennially from 1927 to 1957, as well as information on the town of residence, school attended, and sibling links. Using these unique records, the PIs will construct a measure of historical educational attainment that will be more accurate than the self-reported educational attainment variable present in the 1940 and 1950 decennial censuses. The constructed data will allow the PIs to observe which children had completed their schooling at the time a lynching occurred in their community. The PIs will use the lynching data in the state of Mississippi and the constructed educational attainment data to estimate the causal effect of lynching on the educational attainment of different racial groups in communities where lynchings occurred during the study period. The research results can guide policies to improve educational outcomes of racial minorities, hence narrow the racial achievement gaps in the US.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.