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. As a result, the region had few cities and little manufacturing. • Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, called for a “New South” that would be home to thriving cities, bustling factories, and rewarding business opportunities. Grady inspired a new generation of Southern leaders who strived to fulfill his vision by building a more diversified Southern economy.

3. Economic Growth • The beginning of a new industrial base • New South enthusiasts began by promoting the textile industry. During the antebellum years, planters shipped cotton to textile factories in New England and Great Britain. 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. The number of cotton mills in the South quickly doubled from 161 in 1880 to 400 in 1900.

4. Economic Growth • The beginning of a new industrial base • Tobacco had long played an important role in the South’s history and economy. Still the region’s second most important cash crop, tobacco helped launch one of the South’s great industrial success stories. James Buchanan Duke took over his father’s small but successful tobacco company in the early 1880s. In 1885, Duke acquired a license to use the first automated cigarette making machine. Duke’s shrewd investment soon paid spectacular dividends. Within twenty years, Duke’s American Tobacco Company produced 80 percent of the cigarettes manufactured in the United States. • Iron ore mines near Birmingham, Alabama helped fuel the South’s third great industrial success story. Founded in 1871, Birmingham quickly became a major industrial center and railroad hub. The city’s thriving iron and steel mills led proud boosters to call their city “The Pittsburgh of the South.”

5. Economic Growth • The limits of development • Despite important progress, Grady’s dream of a diversified Southern economy remained elusive. The South’s economic future continued to be closely tied to cotton. The crop depleted the soil, used an inefficient sharecropping system, and tied the entire region’s economy to unpredictable and often falling cotton prices. • Although there were pockets of industrial development, the South remained overwhelmingly agricultural. In 1900, two-thirds of all Southern men still earned their living in farming. At that time, the average income in the South was only 40 percent of that in the North.

6. The Disfranchisement of Black Voters • The end of Reconstruction left political control in the South in the hands of white Democratic Party leaders known collectively as “Redeemers.” Their supporters referred to these postwar leaders as Redeemers because they “redeemed” or saved the South from Republican rule. • The Redeemers included merchants, financiers, and politicians who promoted economic growth based upon industrialization and railroad expansion. At the same time, they cut taxes and reduced state spending. As a result, the Redeemers reversed the gains in public education made during the years of Republican rule. • The Redeemers were committed to economic development and to white supremacy. Poor whites did not see impoverished blacks as fellow victims of economic forces they could not control. Instead, they supported the Redeemers policy of disenfranchising African American voters.

7. The Disfranchisement of Black Voters Number of Southern Black Legislators, 1868-1900 and 1960-1992 • The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited states from denying anyone the right to vote because of race. Redeemer governments used literacy tests and poll taxes to evade the amendment. For example, literacy tests required voters to read and explain the Constitution in a way that satisfied voting registration officials. Needless to say, the white registrars rarely passed black voters. Poll taxes ranged from $1.00 in Georgia to $3.00 in Florida. Voters who skipped an election found that the tax accumulated from one election to the next. • These tactics worked. During the 1890s the 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. How would you do on a literacy test?Would you earn the right to vote?

9. Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 • What happened? • In 1890, the Louisiana General Assembly enacted a Separate Car Law requiring railroads in the state to provide “equal by separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” • Outraged African Americans in New Orleans formed a Citizens’ Committee to challenge the segregation law. On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a young dark-skinned Creole who was one-eighth black, tested the statute by taking a first class seat in a train car reserved for whites. When the conductor asked Plessy to move to the Negro car he refused and was arrested. • Judge John H. Ferguson of New Orleans ruled against Plessy’s plea that the law violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Ferguson’s decision, the 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. • In his famous dissenting opinion, Justice John Marshall Harlan argued that the Louisiana law created “a badge of servitude” that violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

10. 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.

11. Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 • Why should you remember Plessy v. Ferguson? • Plessy v. Ferguson allowed Jim Crow segregation laws to spread across the South. Within a few years, state and local statutes required segregated schools, restaurants, and hotels. Ubiquitous (everywhere) signs sayings “White only” or “Colored” appeared on restroom doors, above water fountains, and inside stores. • Plessy v. Ferguson sanctioned (approved) a pattern of court-supported segregation that lasted about 60 years. Segregated schools used separate facilities that were rarely equal. The Supreme Court finally reversed itself and overturned Plessy v. Ferguson when it ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that segregated schools are inherently unequal.

12. Lynching in the South • Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, and literacy tests were all forms of legalized racial discrimination. White racists also used public lynchings to terrorize blacks and enforce white supremacy. Lynching is the practice of executing a person without a legal trial. During the peak years from 1889 to 1909, more than 1,700 Africans Americans were lynched in the South. • A number of motives combined the cause the outburst of lynchings in the South. For many perpetrators, lynching was a way of enforcing segregation by punishing perceived violations of Jim Crow customs. It was also a way to dissuade blacks from voting and intimidate successful African Americans whose economic progress threatened white ideas about black inferiority.

13. 1882 to 1968

14. 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.

15. 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. • Washington became a 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.

16. Key Quote – Booker T. Washington’s “Separate as the Fingers” Speech • The quote • “In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one hand in all things essential to mutual progress…The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”

17. Key Quote – Booker T. Washington’s “Separate as the Fingers” Speech • Importance • Finding a place in Southern society for African Americans was one of the most pressing issues facing the New South. Washington’s conciliatory (soothing) message that African Americans and whites could lead socially separate lives while working together for economic progress pleased his listeners. He avoided the defiant stand taken by abolitionist leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Instead, he encouraged blacks to accept segregation, seek economic opportunities, and avoid political agitation. Washington urged Southern employers to reject troublesome European immigrants and hire loyal black workers who would be “the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen.” • Proponents of the New South praised Washington’s message of accommodation and self-help. In a short time, the speech catapulted Washington into the position of being the nation’s acknowledged spokes- person for African Americans. As a result, he gained access to wealthy northern philanthropists who generously supported the Tuskegee Institute and other industrial education projects in the South. • Younger, educated blacks led by W.E.B. Du Bois strongly criticized Washington’s commitment to gradual progress. Du Bois derisively (scornfully) called Washington’s speech “the Atlanta Compromise” and instead advocated an alternate program of “ceaseless agitation” to challenge Jim Crow segregation and demand full economic, social, and political equality.

18. The West 1865-1900

19. 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. By 1900, four additional transcontinental railroads crisscrossed the West. Irish and Chinese workers played an important role in these vast construction projects. • The transcontinental railroads enabled diverse groups of miners, cattlemen, and farmers to settle in the West. • The transcontinental railroads also enabled hunters to nearly exterminate the herds of buffalo that roamed the Great Plains. This indiscriminate slaughter dealt a catastrophic blow to the culture of the Plains Indians.

20. 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. For example, the Comstock Lode near Virginia City, Utah yielded deposits of gold and silver worth more than 300 million dollars. • Mining camps included a diverse group of white, black, American Indian, Mexican, and Chinese miners.

21. 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. For example, the Chisholm Trail stretched from San Antonio, Texas to Abilene, Kansas. • During the peak years of the 1870s, as many as 40,000 cowboys roamed the Great Plains. About one-third of the cowboys were Mexican and African Americans. • The era of long drives ended by the late 1880s. Open-range cattle ranching became less profitable as beef prices fell. In addition, many ranchers lost half or more of their herds because of unusually cold winters that struck the Great Plains in 1886 and 1887.

22. 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. Farmers used to living in log cabins had to learn how to build sod homes. A series of new tools including mechanical reapers, wind-driven water pumps, iron plows, and barbed-wire fences enabled determined farmers to overcome natural obstacles and build successful homesteads. • 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.

23. 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.

24. The Defeat and Transformation of the Plains Indians • A Century of Dishonor • Helen Hunt Jackson was an outspoken and prolific (very productive) 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, duplicitous (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. A Century of Dishonor played a key role in mobilizing public support for the Dawes Act.

25. 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. Although well-intentioned, the policy failed to work. The Plains Indians were nomadic warriors and hunters who were unprepared for a culture based upon private property and settled agriculture. • 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.

26. The Defeat and Transformation of the Plains Indians • The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890 • The slaughter of the buffalo caused an irrevocable disruption of Plains Indian culture. 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

27. 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.