The Power of Narratives : Anti-Black Attitudes and Violence in the US South

Systematic discrimination and violence against minorities are enduring phenomena. This paper investigates the role of racist narratives in sustaining discriminatory attitudes and collective violence against the Black population in the United States South from 1865 to today. Leveraging plausible exogeneity in excess deaths from the Civil War, we show that white sex imbalances precipitated a fear of racial mixing, fostering an increase in the prevalence of an association between "Black men" and “sexual predators" in local newspapers. Sex imbalances also increased the demand for segregation, incidence of lynching for alleged sexual offenses, and explicit racial attitudes. This narrative persisted beyond the immediate aftermath of the war, shaping discrimination and collective violence over 150 years