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).