Licensing Emigrant Agents and African American Migration from the Carolinas, 1870-1900

Abstract

In the period following the US Civil War, firms wished to capitalize on the availability of African American labor. To do so they hired emigrant agents, also known as labor agents, to hire and help with the migration of individuals from the South. Faced with out-migration at the hands of the labor force, some southern states licensed the profession as a substantial barrier to practice. I use linked full-count US Censuses to determine the effect that licensing emigrant agents had on the individual probability of migration both out of state, and out of the South. A difference-in-differences analysis on the border counties of North and South Carolina suggests that the licensing of emigrant agents reduced the probability of migration out of the South by more than 1 percentage point.