The New South

1. The New South 1877-1900

2. Economic Growth • Henry Grady’s vision of a “New South” • Cotton plantations and slavery dominated the Old South’s economy. • Few cities, little manufacturing • Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, called for a “New South” • Thriving cities • Factories • Business opportunities • Southern leaders strived to fulfill Grady’s vision by creating a more diversified economy

3. Economic Growth • The beginning of a new industrial base • New South enthusiasts began by promoting the textile industry. • Investors recognized that the South’s ready supply of cheap labor, low taxes, and proximity to cotton fields created ideal conditions for building a profitable textile industry. • Mills soon flourished in small towns across the Piedmont region of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

4. Economic Growth • The beginning of a new industrial base • Tobacco • Region’s second most important cash crop • James Buchanan Duke built the first automated cigarette-making machine in 1885 • Within 20 years, Duke’s American Tobacco Company produced 80% of the country’s cigarettes • Iron ore mines • South’s third industrial success story • Iron ore near Birmingham led the city to become an industrial center and “Pittsburgh of the South”

5. Economic Growth • The limits of development • Despite progress, the South remained reliant on cotton • Depleted the soil • Used inefficient sharecropping system • Depended on unreliable cotton prices • South remained overwhelmingly agricultural. • In 1900, two-thirds of all Southern men still earned their living in farming. • Average income in the South was only 40 percent of that in the North.

6. The Disenfranchisement of Black Voters • “Redeemers” • White Southern Democrats • Redeemed the South from Republican rule • Cut taxed and reduced state spending = reversed gains made in public education during Republican rule • Committed to economic development, white supremacy and disenfranchising African American voters

7. The Disfranchisement of Black Voters Number of Southern Black Legislators, 1868-1900 and 1960-1992 • Redeemer governments used literacy tests and poll taxes to evade the 15th amendment. • Literacy tests required voters to read and explain the Constitution in a way that satisfied voting registration officials. • White registrars rarely passed black voters. • Poll taxes accumulated from one election to the next • Number of black voters plummeted. For example, in 1896, 130,000 blacks were registered to vote in Louisiana. Just four years later the number plunged to just 5,320.

8. Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 • What happened? • 1890 Separate Car Law in Louisiana • “equal by separate accommodations for the white and colored races” • On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a young dark-skinned Creole who was one-eighth black, took a first class seat in a train car reserved for whites. Conductor asked Plessy to move. He refused and was arrested • Judge John H. Ferguson of New Orleans ruled against Plessy’s plea • Citizens’ Committee appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. • The Supreme Court handed down its decision on May 18, 1896. The Court ruled against Plessy by a 7 to 1 vote. The Court’s decision upheld segregation by approving “separate but equal” railroad facilities for African Americans.

9. Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 • What factors contributed to the Supreme Court’s decision? • Following the Civil War, Southern states enacted Black Codes to limit the legal and social rights of African Americans. These codes played an important role in prompting Congress to pass the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the civil rights of African Americans. • The Civil Rights Act of 1875 guaranteed blacks “full and equal enjoyment” of public facilities. However, the Supreme Court began handing down a series of decisions that limited federal protection of African Americans and opened the door to racial segregation. For example, the 1883 Civil Rights Cases ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment only applies to state actions and could not be used to regulate the behavior of private individuals or private organizations. This set a legal precedent that would be used in Plessy v. Ferguson. • The Supreme Court does not reach decisions in a political and social vacuum. By the 1890s, more and more white Southerners rejected the idea of racial equality. The crash of 1893 and the ensuing economic depression further sharpened racial tensions. The Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson reflected the ongoing trend toward enacting Jim Crow segregation laws.

10. Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 • Why should you remember Plessy v. Ferguson? • Allowed Jim Crow segregation laws across the South • Segregated schools, restaurants, bathrooms, water fountains, etc. became legal • Plessy v. Ferguson approved a pattern of court-supported segregation that lasted about 60 years. Segregated schools used separate facilities that were rarely equal.

11. Lynching in the South • Jim Crow laws, poll taxes and literacy tests were all forms of legalized discrimination • Public lynchings were used to terrorize blacks, enforce segregation and discourage voting

12. 1882 to 1968

13. Lynching in the South • Resisting the wave of lynching required great courage. Ida B. Wells, an elementary school teacher and journalist, was galvanized to take action when a white mob in Memphis lynched three of her friends. Wells believed that the victims “crime” was successfully competing with a white-owned grocery store. Outraged by crime, Wells began a lifelong crusade against lynching. She attempted to educate the public by publishing articles, writing books, and organizing black women’s clubs. After a particularly horrifying lynching of a black postmaster in South Carolina, Wells spent five weeks in Washington, D.C. in a futile effort to persuade the federal government to intervene.

14. Key Quote – Booker T. Washington’s “Separate as the Fingers” Speech • The setting • Booker T. Washington was a former slave who attended the Hampton Institute, a school in Virginia that stressed industrial education. Washington later founded a similar school, the Tuskegee Institute, in Alabama. • Leading spokesman for industrial education. He believed that blacks were poor because they had few skills. With a practical vocational education black people would be able to improve their lives by learning useful trades. • In 1895, the organizers of an international exhibition in Atlanta invited Washington to speak to a predominately white audience at the opening ceremonies of their exposition. Although the organizers worries that “public sentiment was not prepared for such an advanced step,” they decided that inviting a black speaker would demonstrate racial progress in the New South.

15. Key Quote – Booker T. Washington’s “Separate as the Fingers” Speech • Importance • Washington’s soothing message that African Americans and whites could lead socially separate lives while working together for economic progress pleased his listeners. He encouraged blacks to accept segregation, seek economic opportunities, and avoid political agitation. Washington urged Southern employers to hire loyal black workers . • Proponents of the New South praised Washington’s message of accommodation and self-help. • Younger, educated blacks led by W.E.B. Du Bois strongly criticized Washington’s commitment to gradual progress. Du Bois instead advocated an alternate program of “ceaseless agitation” to challenge Jim Crow segregation and demand full economic, social, and political equality.

16. The West 1865-1900

17. Key Facts About the West • The transcontinental railroads • Railroad workers and company officials celebrated the completion of the first transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah. • Irish and Chinese workers played an important role in building railroads • The transcontinental railroads enabled diverse groups of miners, cattlemen, and farmers to settle in the West. • Enabled hunters to nearly exterminate the herds of buffalo that roamed the Great Plains. • dealt a catastrophic blow to the culture of the Plains Indians.

18. Key Facts About the West • The miners’ frontier • Discoveries of gold and silver sparked a frenetic rush of prospectors to mines scattered across the Rocky and Sierra Mountains. • Mining camps included a diverse group of white, black, American Indian, Mexican, and Chinese miners.

19. Key Facts About the West • The cowboys’ frontier • During the twenty years after the Civil War, cowboys herded cattle on long drives from Texas to “cow towns” in Kansas. • During the peak years of the 1870s, as many as 40,000 cowboys roamed the Great Plains.

20. Key Facts About the West • The farmer’s frontier • Great Plains agriculture posed new challenges for farmers eager to take advantage of the Homestead Act. • Blizzards, fires, and swarms of locusts swept across the arid and treeless prairies. • In the late 1870s about 25,000 black pioneers called exodusters left the South to start new lives in Kansas. By 1890, over 500,000 blacks lived west of the Mississippi River.

21. The Defeat and Transformation of the Plains Indians • Threats to Native American culture • About 250,000 Native Americans lived on the Great Plains in the early 1860s. They relied upon the buffalo herds for food, clothing, and shelter. • The construction of the transcontinental railroads, the slaughter of the buffalo, the spread of epidemic diseases, and the destructive effects of constant warfare all caused a decline in Native American population.

22. The Defeat and Transformation of the Plains Indians • A Century of Dishonor • Helen Hunt Jackson was an outspoken and prolific writer who championed the cause of Native Americans. Jackson published A Century of Dishonor in 1881. Her book documented the misdeeds of corrupt Indian agents, untruthful government officials, and land-hungry settlers who encroached onto tribal reservations. • Like many other well-meaning reformers, Jackson supported policies designed to bring Native Americans into the mainstream of American life. • Played a key role in mobilizing public support for the Dawes Act.

23. The Defeat and Transformation of the Plains Indians • The Dawes Act, 1887 • The Dawes Act divided tribal lands into individual homesteads of 160-acres, which were then distributed to the head of each Indian family. • The Dawes Act tried to “civilize” Native Americans by turning them into self-supporting farmers. The policy failed to work. • Prior to the Dawes Act, Indian tribes controlled 150 million acres of land. By the time the Indian Reorganization Act was passed in 1934, the Plains Indians lost almost two-thirds of their land.

24. The Defeat and Transformation of the Plains Indians • The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890 • Inspired by visions of a Paiute prophet named Wovoka, many desperate Native Americans performed a ritual Ghost Dance they believed would hasten the return of the buffalo and the departure of white settlers. • Suspicious government agents wanted to suppress performances of the Ghost Dance. Fearing that the Indians intended to go on the warpath, the army dispatched troops to reservations in the Pine Ridge area of present-day South Dakota. • Tensions mounted when the army assumed that 300 Sioux wearing Ghost Dance shirts were preparing to revolt. When a Sioux fired a single shot at the troops, the soldiers returned fire with repeating rifles. About 300 Indians including 200 women and children died in what came to be known as the Wounded Knee Massacre. Chief Sitting Bull

25. Turner’s Frontier Thesis • After studying the 1890 population count, the Superintendent of the U.S. Census issued a statement declaring that the western frontier had closed. The finding surprised and intrigued Frederick Jackson Turner, a young professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. He concluded that the close of the frontier symbolized the end of a great historic movement. • In a paper entitled, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Turner wrote that the frontier experience profoundly shaped the American character. For three centuries land-hungry settlers had been forced by trial and error to create a new way of life. According to Turner, the frontier promoted democracy and encouraged individualism. It produced a unique combination of traits that included resilience, restlessness, and self-reliance, together with an optimistic faith in democratic institutions. The western frontier also promoted opportunity by providing an open society where rigid class lines did not block social mobility. • It is important to note that Turner did not state that the frontier was the sole force shaping the American character. He acknowledged the importance of religious freedom, sectionalism, and industrialization. However, he continued to insist that the frontier experience left an indelible (lasting) impression on the American character.