6.4 The "New South"

"New South", Henry Grady, Birmingham, steel, Memphis, lumber, Richmond, tobacco, national rail network, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, George Washington Carver, Tuskegee Institute, white supremacists, Civil Rights Cases of 1883, Plessy v. Ferguson, Jim Crow Laws, literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, lynch mobs, economic discrimination, Ida B. Wells, International Migration Society, Booker T. Washington, economic cooperation, Atlanta Compromise, W. E. B. Du Bois

“New South”

southerners’ vision for the south with self sufficient economy, etc.

growth of industry in the south

• laissez-faire economics - no government intervention in economics

  • Henry Grady - argued for economic diversity and laissez-faire economics

• south was integrated into the national rail network

• industry efforts

  • Birmingham, Alabama - leading steel production in the U.S.

  • Memphis, Tennessee - lumber industry center

  • Richmond, VA - tobacco industry and capital

  • Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina - chief producer of textiles

• slowed by domination of Northern financing and lack of public education and limited opportunities

agriculture in the New South

• tenant farmers - rented land to farm on

• sharecroppers - paid for use of land in shares of crops harvested

• dependence on cotton → excess production → price declining

• George Washington Carver - African scientist at the Tuskegee Institute promoting agricultural diversity

• Farmers’ Southern Alliance and Colored Farmers’ National Alliances failed to create reform due to upper class economic interests and racism

white supremacists

• supported redeemers (Democratic politicians after Reconstruction)

• treated African Americans as inferiors through segregation

• distracted from actual economic issues by racial fears

Supreme Court upholding white supremacy

• Civil Rights Cases of 1883 - Supreme Court ruling that Congress could not ban racial discrimination in private citizens and businesses

• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) - Supreme Court ruling supporting “separate but equal” facilities, ruled that segregation was not in violation of 14th amendment equal protection clause

• supported Jim Crow Laws (segregation laws for facilities in public places)

loss of African American civil rights

• disenfranchisement upheld by Supreme Court (literacy tests, poll taxes, white-exclusive political party primaries, grandfather clauses)

• stiffer punishment of African Americans for the same crimes, lynch mobs

• economic discrimination - African Americans were reduced to low-paying jobs

responses to segregation

• campaigning against segregation

  • Ida B. Wells - editor of Black newspaper Memphis Free Speech campaigning against lynching and Jim Crow Laws

  • W. E. B. Du Bois - African American leader demanding an end to segregation and equal rights

• leaving the south

  • International Migration Society - helped African Americans emigrate to Africa

• accommodating segregation, racial harmony and economic cooperation

  • Booker T. Washington

  • Atlanta Compromise - belief in the shared responsibility of African Americans and Whites to make the South prosper