Sunbelt by the Sea

Histories of the Sunbelt have tended to overlook the emergence of leisure and tourism-based economies and their transformative effects on coastal populations and ecosystems. This article follows the demise of Princess Anne County, Virginia, a rural, agricultural county in tidewater Virginia, and the rise of Virginia Beach, the “world’s largest resort city,” from the early twentieth century to the present, as experienced by the African Americans who lived, and worked on, and steadily lost, the land. Through this case study, the author outlines a framework for analyzing the social and environmental dimensions of the Sunbelt revolution and for locating the place of coastal metropolises in the making of modern American political culture. It shows how contests over municipal incorporation and land use and development policy deeply informed civil and property rights movements on a local level, while also underscoring the extent to which these two movements shaped and influenced each other. By drawing attention to the conditions and outlooks of African American farmers, small landowners, and service workers in the twentieth-century coastal South, this article also highlights broader changes in the political economy and ecology of race, space, and power that accompanied the rise of the Sunbelt, and shows how these changes were mediated through leisure space and leisure-based economies.