A Retrospective on Black Separatism : Kinloch, Missouri In An Era of Racial Turbulence

In the racially tense late 1960s, Kinloch Missouri was a politically autonomous Black community of nearly 10,000 residents, composed of African-Americans who were free to plan and conduct their own municipal affairs by whatever means they chose to try and improve their conditions. The town was incorporated on the premise that - through a substantial measure of self-determination – African-Americans could gain for themselves what they were denied in municipalities with superordinate White political machinery. In the event, Kinloch’s population was effectively isolated, and its well-marked borders formed clear social as well as political boundaries. For advocates of the separatist-style Black Power of the time, the Community would seem to have provided an ideal environment for the independent development of Black institutions. This paper presents the results of a two-year clinical study of the social and economic development of Kinloch. It is more than an historical artifact, with key lessons on the economics and politics of race-related scarcity as well as the costs and benefits or racial municipal autonomy