To Begin… Please get out paper for the in-class FRQ. Announcement: Dr. Bowes guest lecture has been rescheduled for Monday 12/12 from 3:30-4:30. Please change your calendars accordingly.
The “New South” To what degree did the post Civil War South reflect new behaviors and beliefs? 12/2
Chat with your neighbor about the PD Describe the “new” South that Grady envisions. What steps do you think would need to be taken to achieve his vision? Do you think his prediction will come true? Why?
Post-Civil War Economy Growing Industrialism Steel (Alabama) Textiles (North Carolina) Attracted by cheap labor, lack of union organization, and proximity to raw materials. Often experienced lower wages and worse conditions than Northern counterparts However… to many this meant steady work and opportunity for advancement
Discrimination in the Courts Civil Rights Cases (1883) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Plessy v. Ferguson “…the object of the [Fourteenth] Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law; but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other… …We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so… it is solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it…Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences… If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution cannot put them upon the same plane…”
Discrimination in the Courts Civil Rights Cases (1883) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Jim Crow laws
Discrimination at the Polls Literacy tests Poll taxes Residency requirements Grandfather Clause
Discrimination in the Workplace African Americans received few if any industrial jobs Sharecropping and tenant farming Crop-lien system
African-American Response Leadership of black churches African-American entrepreneurs Social, fraternal, and service organizations Prominent individuals W.E.B. Dubois Booker T. Washington Ida B. Wells Henry McNeal Turner
…To End: Was the South Really “New”? To what degree was the post-Civil War South different from the pre-Civil War South? Consider the following: Economics Politics Race relations Who is to blame for the South’s not fulfilling Henry Grady’s grand vision? Why?