Blacks, Whites and New South

1. Blacks, Whites and New South Richard Jensen Sumter 2008

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

3. After Reconstruction • 1872: “Liberal Republicans” revolt • Populist revolt of poor white farmers fails (1890-96) • PLESSY V. FERGUSON (1896) Segregation ok’d by Supreme Court Disfranchisement (1890s) • Lynchings & racial violence (1890-1920) • NAACP formed (1906)

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

5. Modernizers wanted to bring industry to South

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

7. Cotton Belt = Black Belt

8. Black Belt 1910

11. Then: Picking cotton by hand

12. Then: farmers bring in cotton crop

13. Today: machines do the work

14. South Carolina today • Only 900 cotton farms left in the state • 2006 2 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 Statistics

15. Tobacco Too

16. Moonshine & Lawlessness

17. Baptist & Methodist Churches Grow

18. 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

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

20. Terminology: contested • Colored (19c) • people of color (1980- ) • Negro (1910-1960) • “niggra” (polite South before 1960) • Black (1960- ) • African-American (1980- ) • N-Word (very nasty term)

21. 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 South, 1865-1940: Parallel Social Structure

22. 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

23. Segregation Era 1880-1964 • 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, 1890-1915 • Lynchings during transition • Economic Status: very poor

24. Disfranchisement 1890-1965 • 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 (1890-1965)

25. Lynching

27. White Views 1890-1930 • 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

28. Black Leadership Disputes 1890-1930 • 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

30. W E B DuBois

31. Marcus Garvey & Back to Africa 1920

32. Drafted into Army World War I

33. Migration: out of rural South