Short answers, pulled from the story.
The United States Census Bureau processed data on a UNIVAC I computer in 1950 to prove that white families were abandoning cities at an unprecedented rate. This scientific proof demonstrated that white flight was a mass migration rather than a slow trickle. The findings revealed that the phenomenon was a complex interplay of fear, economics, and policy.
The Federal Housing Administration issued underwriting manuals in 1938 that explicitly recommended racial restrictions. These manuals stated that properties should be occupied only by the race for which they were intended and that schools should not be attended by inharmonious racial groups. These policies determined who could get a mortgage and who could not.
Political scientist Morton Grodzins coined the concept of the tipping point in 1958. This concept described a psychological threshold where the presence of non-white residents exceeded the neighborhood's tolerance for interracial living. The departure of a few sensitive individuals raised the level of mixing for their remaining neighbors, pushing them past their own departure thresholds.
The white student body at Clifton Park Junior High School in Baltimore plummeted from 2,023 to just twelve over a decade. The Black student population surged to 2,037 during the same period. This pattern was repeated in cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Oakland.
The Supreme Court declared segregation of public schools unconstitutional in the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. This decision was met with massive resistance in many southern jurisdictions. White parents withdrew their children from public schools and established private religious schools instead.
About 800,000 out of an earlier total population of 5.2 million whites left South Africa after 1995. This exodus was driven by high rates of violent crime and concerns about affirmative action programs. The phenomenon echoed across continents from South Africa to Zimbabwe and from Europe to Australia.