Blacks, Whites and New South
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Transcript of Blacks, Whites and New South
Blacks, Whites and New South
Richard Jensen
Sumter 2008
Blacks as 2nd 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 (1890-
96)• PLESSY V. FERGUSON (1896) Segregation
ok’d by Supreme Court Disfranchisement (1890s)
• Lynchings & racial violence (1890-1920)• NAACP formed (1906)
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• 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
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 2nd 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 (1910-1960)• “niggra” (polite South before 1960)
• Black (1960- )
• African-American (1980- )
• N-Word (very nasty term)
South, 1865-1940: 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 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
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)
Lynching
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
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
W E B DuBois
Marcus Garvey & Back to Africa 1920
Drafted into Army World War I
Migration: out of rural South