Invisible Fences
Municipal Underbounding in Southern Moore County
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In recent years, social scientists and civil rights advocates have studied a modernday form of residential segregation known as municipal underbounding, whereby predominantly minority communities are kept separate from their larger, predominantly white municipal counterparts. Underbounding occurs when land-use policies and practices result in the systematic exclusion of minority communities from municipal boundaries as cities and towns expand around them. Such exclusion often translates into a denial of services, or, if provided, a lower level of services; reduced access to infrastructure; and political or economic isolation.
While there is evidence indicating this is a national phenomenon, municipal underbounding appears to be especially prevalent in small Southern towns where historicland ownership and settlement patterns resulted in high concentrations of African Americans just outside municipal boundaries. While the initial exclusion of minority communities can in part be explained by history, their continued exclusion suggests something more sinister. In essence, the jagged and irregular municipal boundaries found in many Southern towns suggest that this exclusion is a new form of institutionalized segregation that has gone largely unnoticed by the general public.
This report is intended to increase public awareness of this growing phenomenon by focusing on the challenges faced by five minority communities in southern Moore County, North Carolina — Jackson Hamlet, Waynor Road, Midway, Monroe Town, and Lost City — that have been excluded from neighboring, more affluent communities.
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