The Life and Death of a Company Town
Reason magazine|March 2024
MORE THAN A century ago, there was a town where families of different races lived side by side. Neither housing nor schooling was segregated, and blacks and whites received the same wages for the same work. They also enjoyed many appealing amenities, from high-quality homes to a three-story YMCA.
Jesse Walker
The Life and Death of a Company Town

When the historian Dorothy Schwieder and the sociologists Elmer Schwieder and Joseph Hraba interviewed dozens of former residents for their 1987 book Buxton, the old-timers' memories were positively glowing. One African-American woman remembered the place as a "kind of heaven." That is not a phrase one ordinarily associates with a coal-mining company town. But Buxton, lowa, was built by the Consolidation Coal Company.

This story is from the March 2024 edition of Reason magazine.

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