A New South?:
The South, 1877-1900
North vs. South in 1861
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Wealth: 25%
Farmland: 25%
Railroad Milage: 29%
Factory Production: 9%
Population: 29%
The South in 1877
• Run by Pre-Civil War Elites and Veterans
of the Civil War
• Not Fully Segregated
• Cotton Dependent
• Poor
The New South: Henry Grady
• 1886: Henry Grady Calls for a New South
Fuel for Industrializing
• Southern Pride
• Southern Poverty Provides Labor
• Inefficiency of Sharecropping
Industrialization: 1877-1900
• Steel Mills—Birmingham, Alabama
• Textiles—The Carolinas
• Tobacco and Soft Drinks
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Cigarettes: James Duke
Coca-Cola – Dr. John Pemberton
Dr. Pepper – Charles Alderton
Pepsi – Caleb Bradham
• Railroads—Double from 1880 to 1890
Dr. John Pemberton,
Inventor of Coca-Cola
Problems
• Limited Growth: 1860-1900 - .2%
• Per Capita Income:
– 1860: 72% of National Average
– 1880: 52%
– 1920: 62%
• Wages are low; Southerners can't buy much to support
Southern industry
• Low Education Spending = lack of skilled workers
• Capital Problems – Businesses can't get money to
grow
Growth of Southern Cities
• Centers of Industry and Commerce
• Better Transportation = More connected to
outside
• Alienation from the countryside
– Country thinks cities are SINFUL
– City folk think country folk are in-bred yokels
The Cotton Trap
• There is always a market for cotton
• But cotton keeps getting less valuable, so
you end up in debt
• Creditors only accept cotton as payment!
• A vicious circle
Southern Agrarian Revolt
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Lower Interest Credit
Lower Rail Shipping Rates
Lower Food Prices
Lower Necessity Prices
Higher Crop Prices
Organized Protest
• The Grange: Farmer Social Clubs →
Protest
• The Southern Farmer’s Alliance
– Political Protest + Social Help + Christianity
– Whites only!
• The Colored Farmer’s Alliance
– Farmer's alliance for Blacks only!
• After 1890, Farm Prices Plummet
– Farmer's Alliances collapse
Charles Macune,
Leader of the Farmer’s Alliances
• Doctor, Journalist,
Farmer
• Strong supporter of
farm co-operatives
• Proposed 'Subtreasury
system' of government
warehouses and loans
based on crops
deposited there
Women in the New South
• Southerners restricted women even more than the
North
• Urban Middle Class Women still had too much
time on their hands
• Church Work
• Women’s Christian Temperance Union
• Memorials: United Daughters of the
Confederacy (1894)
• Women’s Clubs: Social → Protest
1877-1890: An Uncertain
System
• A New Black Generation Challenged
Discrimination
• Increasingly poor whites respond with
violence
• Lynchmobs
– 1892: 235 Lynchings
– 1882-1903: Almost 2000 lynchings
– Grew out of confrontations in business and
politics
Segregation
• Rising in South, Declining in North
• Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896, 7-1)
– “separate but equal”: Allows discrimination
by race if facilities are “equal”
– Only Justice Harlan dissents
Consequences of Plessy vs.
Ferguson
• Massive discrimination ensues: “Jim Crow”
laws
• Voting Disenfranchisement
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Poll Taxes
Literacy Tests
Knowledge Tests
Many whites exempted by 'Grandfather' clauses
• Racism is rampant
Black Responses
• Many blacks move to cities to create their own private
communities
• Fraternal Orders pooled resources
– North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company
(1898)
• Black Education:
– 60-70% of Urban kids in school
– 81 Black Universities by 1899
• Black Women pushed to build community; less likely
to be lynched.
Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
(1856-1915)
• Emphasized self-improvement, education,
industry, and the Black community making
itself wealthier
• But he also counseled avoiding head-on
confrontation with whites
– Atlanta Compromise: Blacks promise to stay
out of politics and Whites will leave them be to
be productive in their home communities.
• Some Blacks see this as selling out!
A Tuskegee Classroom
The Tuskeegee Institute
• Founded on the Hampton model in 1881
• Emphasis on Teacher Instruction and
Practical (Craft) Education
• Co-Educational
George Washington Carver (18641943)
• Director of
Agricultural
Research
• Urged crop rotation
• Urged new crops:
soybeans, sweet
potatoes, peanuts