Long in the writing, Gavin Wright's Sharing the Prize is a comprehensive assessment of the consequences of the modern Civil Rights Movement for the American South. It is divided into a preface and eight chapters. Chapter one, the introduction, states the main theme—the civil rights revolution led to fundamental and lasting improvements in the economic well-being of African Americans in the South but not at the expense of whites. Chapter two is a prelude to the main event, beginning with a quick portrait of the postbellum south as a sort of a bullet-point update of Wright's earlier book, Old South, New South. Chapter three examines the desegregation of public accommodations which, in retrospect, happened quite quickly. White businessman had overwhelmingly favored segregation, believing that their white customers would never tolerate shopping or dining where there were black patrons. Wright shows, however, that they were wrong; retail sales increased after desegregation whether this came about “voluntarily” in response to boycotts or sit-ins, or after 1964, when Congress passed legislation desegregating public accommodations.

Chapter four focuses on the labor market, using the South Carolina textile industry as the main example. Prior to the civil rights revolution, southern textile owners hired very few blacks. An outside force—the federal government—gave them a reason, and workplace integration followed. Chapter five studies school desegregation. Here the story is obviously different in key respects because there was massive resistance to Brown. Again the federal government proved to be crucial. Post-desegregation cohorts of southern black students benefitted from desegregation, while southern white pupils do not seem to have been harmed. The chapter concludes with a discussion about why school desegregation has only proceeded so far and why it has been so difficult to maintain (answer: residential segregation versus neighborhood schools).

Chapter six is concerned with voting rights, beginning ca. 1900 with disenfranchisement (personally I would have preferred starting with the immediate post-Civil War period, as there are many parallels to what happens after 1965). Although there was an upward trend in black voting prior to the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, there is no question that the VRA led to a monumental increase in black voter registration in the South, as it was intended to do. The rise in black voting led to the election of many black officials in the South, the vast majority at the local level. A variety of studies suggest that the increase in black officials produced tangible improvements in the quality of life for ordinary African Americans. Blacks also benefitted from the “de-racialization” of political rhetoric; it was no longer possible for a southern white politician to adopt openly racist or segregationist positions (although, as any student of politics knows, there is coded language to substitute).

Chapter seven looks at several “downsides” of the civil rights movement, such as the demise of black businesses that had thrived under segregation but not integration. Acknowledging that such demise occurred, Wright nevertheless points out that there were many causes other than desegregation. Next, Wright considers the charge that desegregation wasn't all it was cracked up to be by looking at hospital desegregation, another example of federal intervention (Medicare). Hospital desegregation brought very tangible and valuable benefits in the form of reduced black infant mortality in the South. Another alleged downside is that the movement bypassed poor blacks in the black belt. Wright shows that region-wide there was a marked reduction in poverty following the civil rights revolution, much of it concentrated among rural blacks, including those in black belt counties. Lastly, Wright tackles the much thornier question as to whether the explicit “racial” political strategy of the original movement laid the groundwork for a later backlash. Perhaps, but it is difficult to see how anything close to the original results could have been achieved without an explicitly racial approach, since the injustices that were being combatted were racial in origin and their effects intergenerational. Chapter eight concludes by summarizing the basic arguments. Rather pointedly, Wright warns that the successes of the revolution were far from complete and some could easily be reversed. He could not have known how prescient his warning was, given the Supreme Court's recent decision to declare Section 5 of the Voting Right Act to be unconstitutional in its present form.

In making his points, Wright draws authoritatively and critically from a vast literature in economics, history, political science, and sociology, as well as a large repository of telling anecdotes. A downside of his approach is that careful identification and measurement of the causal effects of civil rights legislation or movement activities (such as the sit-ins and boycotts that preceded the desegregation of public accommodations) is eschewed. This criticism aside, Sharing the Prize deserves the wide audience it undoubtedly will receive.