Breaking the Bonds of Segregation: Civil Rights Politics and the History of Modern Finance.

This article examines the civil rights movement’s strategic use of financial knowledge and municipal bond market campaigns to challenge the economic foundations of racial segregation in the United States between 1954 and 1965. It highlights how the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) identified northern investment banks, bond attorneys, and institutional investors as key actors financing segregated southern municipalities through tax-exempt bonds. By targeting bond sales, leveraging legal challenges, and organizing boycotts of financial institutions underwriting segregation, these civil rights organizations sought to disrupt the flow of capital sustaining Jim Crow-era segregation. The article also explores the complexities and paradoxes of these campaigns, including the involvement of Black-owned insurance companies as bondholders and the financial market’s adaptation to political pressures, revealing the intertwined nature of finance, law, and social activism in the struggle for racial justice.