1. SS8H7a
Georgia’s
History:
1877 to 1918
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2. SS8H7 Evaluate key political, social, and economic changes that occurred in Georgia during the New South Era
Identify the ways individuals, groups, and events attempted to shape the New South; include the Bourbon Triumvirate, Henry Grady, International Cotton Expositions, and Tom Watson and the Populists.
b. Analyze how rights were denied to African Americans or Blacks through Jim Crow laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, disenfranchisement, and racial violence, including the 1906 Atlanta Riot.
c. Explain the roles of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Alonzo Herndon in advancement of the rights of African Americans or Blacks in the New South Era.
d. Examine antisemitism and the resistance to racial equality exemplified in the Leo Frank case
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3. Bourbon Triumvirate
After Reconstruction, Democrats known as “Bourbons” rose to power in the South.
Bourbons believed that the South should rely less on agriculture and more on industry.
In Georgia, three Bourbon leaders dominated the state’s politics from 1872 to 1890: Joseph E. Brown, John B. Gordon, and Alfred H. Colquitt.
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4. Bourbon Triumvirate
The Bourbon Triumvirate supported policies that replaced Georgia’s former large plantation-owning class with a new middle and business class.
They also expanded railroads and increased industrialization, and gained wealth as railroads, cities, and factories flourished in Georgia.
They promoted “white supremacy” in order to keep the political support of white racists.
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5. Joseph E. Brown
Joseph Brown was a secessionist who was Georgia’s governor during the Civil War.
He served four terms as the state’s governor until he was named chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court.
Brown eventually served Georgia as a US Senator from
He became one of the state’s wealthiest men.
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6. John B. Gordon
John B. Gordon was a Civil War general who later became the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia.
He became a US Senator in 1872 and resigned in 1880.
In 1886, Gordon became Georgia’s governor for two terms.
He returned to the Senate for one more term before leaving politics.
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7. Alfred H. Colquitt
Alfred H. Colquitt was educated at Princeton University.
He owned slaves before the Civil War and served in the Confederate army.
Colquitt was a Methodist Minister and often taught Sunday school in black churches.
Colquitt served as the state’s first democratic governor after Reconstruction from 1877 to 1882.
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8. Henry Grady
Henry Grady was editor of the Atlanta Constitution from 1880 to 1889, and used his newspaper to promote what he labeled the “New South”.
Grady believed the South needed to stop relying on farming and become more like the North economically.
He tried to get northern businesses to invest in the South, and convinced many northerners to invest in Atlanta.
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9. 1881 Atlanta International Cotton Expo
In 1881, Henry Grady promoted Georgia’s first International Cotton Exposition, an industrial fair that spotlighted attention on the state’s cotton textile industry.
The exposition attracted 200,000 paid visitors and showed the country that Georgia was ready for more industry.
Georgia went on to host more expositions, attracting people from 33 states and 7 countries.
1881 Atlanta International Cotton Expo
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10. Tom Watson
During the 1880s, most farmers were suffering economically and falling further and further into debt.
Cotton prices had dropped dramatically and labor was hard to find after slaves were freed.
Georgia lawyer Tom Watson criticized Grady’s New South because he claimed it hurt small farmers.
In 1890, Watson won a seat in Congress and argued for farmers’ issues in Washington.
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11. Populists Rural Free Delivery Service
In 1891, the People’s Party (commonly known as Populist Party) was organized by farmers and Tom Watson became the party’s leader in Georgia.
Watson’s greatest reform was the Rural Free Delivery Bill which provided free mail delivery to rural farmers.
Populists fought to help farmers and urged farmers to work together for their cause.
The Populists challenged the dominate Democratic Party in Georgia by threatening to split the white vote and to bring in black Republicans.
Rural Free
Delivery Service
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12. Jim Crow Laws
Discrimination against African Americans continued in the South after Reconstruction.
To ensure segregation, Georgia and many other southern states, passed Jim Crow laws.
Georgia’s first Jim Crow law required whites and blacks to ride in separate railroad cars
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13. Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws made it legal to have separate drinking fountains, telephone booths, restrooms, hospitals, hotels, and schools.
African Americans could not sit with white people on trains, eat in certain restaurants, or attend certain theaters or parks.
These laws violated the newly won rights of African Americans, but it would be almost 100 years before they were abandoned.
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14. Plessy v. Ferguson Homer Plessy
In 1892, Louisiana had a law saying that blacks and whites could not share the same railway cars.
A man named Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the “Whites Only” section of the East Louisiana Railroad.
Plessy was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black
Homer Plessy
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15. Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy took his case to court, saying that his rights under the 13th and 14th Amendments had been violated.
He sued all the way to the Supreme Court, where they ruled against Plessy.
The Court ruled that segregation was constitutional as long as African American facilities are equal to whites’ facilities.
The case upheld Jim Crow laws and established a legal doctrine known as “separate but equal”.
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16. Disenfranchisement Poll Tax Receipt
Although the Fifteenth Amendment protected black men’s right to vote, many southern whites came up with ways to keep blacks from voting.
By 1900, disenfranchisement, or blocking the black vote, was almost complete.
Poll Tax Receipt
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17. Disenfranchisement Literacy Rate Test
Some legislatures passed a poll tax, which required voters to pay money before they could vote.
Many African-Americans were too poor to pay the tax and could not vote.
Literacy test laws required voters to be able to read a passage before voting.
At the time, about half of African-Americans could not read so they could not vote.
Literacy
Rate
Test
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18. Racial Violence
When these laws failed to disfranchise African Americans, groups like the Ku Klux Klan used violence, intimidation, and lynchings to keep blacks from exercising their 15th Amendment rights.
Klansmen often surrounded polling places, so many black voters stayed away from the polls for fear of racial violence.
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19. 1906 Atlanta Riot
The period from 1890 to 1930 was the bloodiest period of racial violence in Georgia’s history.
In September 1906, growing racial tensions resulted in the three-day Atlanta Race Riot.
A white mob started the riot, in part due to unproven reports that black men had assaulted several white women.
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20. 1906 Atlanta Riot
Hoke Smith was running for governor and contributed to the racial tension with his appeals to white racism in an attempt to win votes.
The mob attacked black-owned businesses and killed several business owners.
At least 12 people died during the violence.
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21. Booker T. Washington Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington was influential in the struggle for equal rights during the late 1800s.
He was a former slave who believed that blacks should focus on learning a trade.
Washington felt that by proving themselves in different fields, African Americans would eventually be treated as equal citizens.
He accepted social separation and felt that African Americans could advance faster through hard work than by demanding equal rights.
Booker T. Washington
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22. W.E.B. DuBois
W.E.B. DuBois was another influential African American during this time period; however, his views on gaining equal rights differed from Washington’s.
He taught at Atlanta University and promoted college education within the black community.
He felt that African Americans should speak out against discrimination and that college-educated African Americans should lead the fight against it.
W.E.B. DuBois
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23. W.E.B. DuBois
W.E.B. DuBois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization that works to protect equal rights for African Americans.
Even today, the NAACP remains a key political voice for the African American community.
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24. Alonzo Herndon Alonzo Herndon
Alonzo Herndon was born a slave and grew up to become a barber.
By 1907, he owned three barber shops in Atlanta that had crystal chandeliers and gold fixtures.
Herndon used his wealth to start the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, one of the few companies that would insure African Americans.
Alonzo Herndon
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25. Alonzo Herndon
Herndon gave large sums of money to many charities and became the largest donor to Atlanta University, where he served on the Board of Trustees.
When he died in 1927, he was the wealthiest African American in Atlanta.
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26. Leo Frank Case Mary Phagan Leo Frank
African-Americans were not the only targets of ethnic violence during the early 1900s.
Anti-Semitism, the prejudice or discrimination against Jews, was also prevalent in the south.
Leo Frank was a Jewish factory superintendent in Atlanta.
In 1913, he was convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old female worker.
The trial was filled with conflicting testimony and unanswered questions.
Mary
Phagan
Leo
Frank

27. Leo Frank Case Leo Frank Trial
Frank was sentenced to life in prison, but two years later, citizens from Mary’s hometown in Marietta kidnapped him and hanged him from an oak tree.
Decades later, new evidence revealed that the murder was most likely committed by someone else.
The state pardoned Frank 71 years after his lynching, but the case symbolized Southerners’ strong anti-Semitic feelings at the time.
Leo
Frank
Trial
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