The New South & Jim Crow Era

Compromise of 1877 & Redeemers

  • Compromise ended Reconstruction; hoped to build a southern Republican base—failed.

  • Power shifted to white Democratic “Redeemers”; mix of old planters and new business elites.

  • Policies: cut taxes, spending, public schools; ignored/attacked Black rights.

Industrialization & “New South”

  • Leaders (e.g., Henry Grady) preached thrift, industry, progress while upholding white supremacy.

  • Growth areas: textiles, tobacco, iron/steel (notably Birmingham), railroads (gauge unified with North in 1886).

  • Southern share of U.S. manufacturing rose to 10\%; per-capita income ≈ 40\% of North by 1900.

  • Labor: long hours, half of northern wages, company-town control; high female workforce; limited but present Black employment.

African American Strategies & Atlanta Compromise

  • Some Blacks entered middle class; built colleges (e.g., Tuskegee Institute).

  • Booker T. Washington urged industrial education, self-help, accommodation to segregation (Atlanta Compromise, 1895).

Lost Cause Mythology

  • Originated 1866 (Edward Pollard). Framed Confederacy as noble, slavery as benign.

  • Led by white women; monuments, memorial days, school curricula; groups: United Daughters of the Confederacy (1894), Sons of Confederate Veterans (1896).

Jim Crow Laws & Disenfranchisement

  • Supreme Court undercut 14^{th}/15^{th} Amendments (Civil Rights Cases 1883).

  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): “separate but equal”; Cumming v. Board (1899): white-only schools allowed.

  • Voting barriers: poll taxes, property tests, “literacy/understanding” exams; Black vote down 62\%, white down 26\% by late 1890s.

  • Segregation covered transport, housing, parks, hospitals, etc.

Minstrel Shows & Popular Culture

  • Post-Civil War’s most popular entertainment; white performers in blackface caricatured Blacks (“Jim Crow,” “Zip Coon”).

  • Black troupes (e.g., Georgia Minstrels 1865) adapted form, pioneered dance (buck and wing) and music that fed into ragtime, jazz.

Lynching & Antilynching Movement

  • Average lynchings \approx 187 per year in 1890s; >80\% in South, victims mainly Black men.

  • Ida B. Wells’s writings (1892) launched international antilynching campaign; repeated but unsuccessful bids for federal law (from 1918 onward).