Blacks, Whites and New South Richard Jensen Sumter 2008

Blacks as 2 nd Class Citizens Loss of Political Power Segregation Poor services (schools) Sharecroppers Some Farm Owners Leaders: ministers & teachers

After Reconstruction 1872: “Liberal Republicans” revolt Populist revolt of poor white farmers fails ( ) PLESSY V. FERGUSON (1896) Segregation ok’d by Supreme Court Disfranchisement (1890s)PLESSY V. FERGUSON (1896) Lynchings & racial violence ( )Lynchings NAACP formed (1906)NAACP

Heroic Image of KKK in “Birth of a Nation” movie 1913

Modernizers wanted to bring industry to South

Geography- 1 RURAL South “black belt” Cotton Also tobacco

Cotton Belt = Black Belt

Black Belt 1910

Then: Picking cotton by hand

Then: farmers bring in cotton crop

Today: machines do the work

South Carolina today Only 900 cotton farms left in the state million jobs in SC: –Factories: 260,000 (including 28,000 in textile mills) –Construction: 123,000 –Stores 370,000 –Education & health: 290,000 –Tourism 205,000 –Government 334,000 –Unemplyed 140,000 –recent Statisticsrecent Statistics

Tobacco Too

Moonshine & Lawlessness

Baptist & Methodist Churches Grow

Conditions in 1900 Most blacks in rural South –Segregation –Jim Crow –Most in poverty, but making gains –Education: little –Voting: no in deep South; yes in North; yes in border states –Lynchings and threats

Blacks as 2 nd Class Citizens Loss of Political Power Segregation Poor services (schools) Sharecroppers Some Farm Owners Leaders: ministers & teachers

Terminology: contested Colored (19c) –people of color (1980- ) Negro ( ) “niggra” (polite South before 1960) Black (1960- ) African-American (1980- ) N-Word (very nasty term)

South, : Parallel Social Structure White South upper class middle class Farm owner working class tenants/ croppers Black South upper class middle class Farm owner working class tenants/ croppers underclass

Religious Structure Very high religiosity 65% Baptist, 20% Methodist –Also Catholic, Fundamentalist, Muslim own [segregated] churches dominant ministers –Adam Clayton Powell (1950s) –M L King (1960s) Blacks as Christlike victims –Must redeem whites from racism

Segregation Era Exclusion from power & prestige Segregation: De Facto & De Jure –Supreme Court approves: Plessy v Ferguson, 1896 –schools, churches, jobs –GEOGRAPHICAL: “BLACK BELT” IN So, cities Politics: Age of White Supremacy –Disfranchisement, –Lynchings during transition Economic Status: very poor

Disfranchisement The attack: Blacks political corrupt; never learned republicanism; system must be purified Defense: racism is even worse form of corruption Result: blacks lose vote in deep South ( )

Lynching

White Views Black and Tans –continue interracial coalition Neo-Abolitionists –war not over till blacks get equality Paternalists –Blacks need education & economic independence before vote White Supremacists –zero toleration of black power

Black Leadership Disputes Booker T. Washington, political leader –Atlanta speech, 1896 = accept segregation –Tuskegee Institute & industrial education –Work with T Roosevelt, Carnegie W.E.B. DuBois-- intellectual leader; NAACP –equality; liberal arts for “talented tenth” Marcus Garvey: Black Nationalism, 1920s

W E B DuBois

Marcus Garvey & Back to Africa 1920

Drafted into Army World War I

Migration: out of rural South