APUSH - Topic 6.4 The "New South"

Explain how various factors contributed to continuity and change in the "New South" from 1877 to 1898

“New South”

• self-sufficient economy

• modern capitalist values

• industrial growth, modernized transportation, improved race relations

• supported by some southerners

  • Henry Grady, editor of Atlanta Constitution

Growth of Industry

• Birmingham → leading steel producer

• Memphis → lumber

• Richmond → tobacco

• Some southern states overtook New England states as textile producers

• railroads integrated into national rail network

• postwar growth equaled or surpassed the rest of the country

Factors that slowed Southern Growth

• Northern financing dominated Southern economy

  • profits made in the South went to Northern banks instead of recirculating

• failed to expand public education

  • limited opportunities in quickly advancing world

  • industrial workers earned half of national average and worked longer hours

Tenant farmers and sharecroppers

• tenant farmers rented land

• sharecroppers paid for land with a share of the crop

  • farmers became tied to land, barely getting by

Crops

• postwar economy was tied to cotton

• cotton planting doubled from 1870 to 1900

  • excess of cotton in markets caused decline in prices → many farmers lost their farms

• Some farmers tried to diversity their crops

  • George Washington Carver

Attempts to Organize

• farmers were often in cycles of debt and poverty

• Alliances (1890)

  • Farmers’ Southern Alliance had 1 million members

  • Colored Farmers’ National Alliance had 250,000 members

• unable to make a significant political difference because they were separated by racial stigma

Redeemers and White Supremacists

• Democratic politicians who came to power after Reconstruction

• White supremacists

  • enjoyed segregating public facilities

• Redeemers

  • used race to distract from concerns of tenant farmers and the poor

  • played on racial fears of Whites

Civil Rights Cases of 1883

• Racial discrimination practiced by private business (eg. railroads, hotels) could not be punished

Plessy v. Ferguson

1896

• deemed “separate but equal accommodations” acceptable

Jim Crow Laws

began in 1870s

• required segregated washrooms, drinking fountains, park benches, other facilities

Loss of Voting Rights

• 99% decline in voting from 1896 to 1904 (Louisiana)

• literacy tests, poll taxes, political party primaries that only included Whites

• grandfather clauses → a person could vote if their grandfather had voted

  • allowed poor uneducated whites to vote + prevented blacks from voting

Discrimination

• Blacks could not serve on juries in the south

• often received worse punishments than whites when convicted

• Lynch mobs killed 1,400+ Black men in the 1890s

Economic discrimination

• Blacks kept out of skilled trades and factory jobs

  • other races gained skills that helped them join middle class but Blacks stayed farmers and other low-paying work

Ida B. Wells

• editor of Memphis Free Speech

• campaigned against lynching and Jim Crow

• received death threats

International Migration Society

1894

• helped Blacks emigrate to Africa

Booker T. Washington

• former slave

• established a trade school for African Americans

• supported Black owned business

• Hand analogy - everyone has a different job, but we all work together

• Blacks should focus on working hard instead of challenging discrimination

• often criticized for being too willing to accept discrimination

Atlanta Compromise

• Black and White Southerners have a shared responsibility to make their region prosper

W.E.B. Du Bois

• Highly educated

• demanded end to segregation

• founded NAACP

  • change the law, not people’s minds