THE CHANGING SOUTH(Chapter 9)

Introduction

• Deeper regional sense than any other part of the U.S.

• Regionality reinforced by people from across the U.S.

• Often perceived superficially and in caricature• Tremendous diversity with many subregions

possessing their own versions of southern culture • Does not include geographically southernmost

areas of southern Florida, Texas• Rapid changes

(page 167)

Fall Line cities

The Southern Heritage

• Early European settler goals commercial, exploitative

• Geographical advantages– Areas suitable for agriculture• Good soils• Long, hot summers• Ample rainfall• Mild winters

– Navigable rivers

Settlement Patterns

• Most areas strongly rural until late 20th century• Ports and small market centers– Collection and transshipment points for cash crops– Little linkage with each other– Distinctly local allegiances– Most people very isolated

• Plantations– Highly structured– Dedicated to cash crop production

Peoples

• Much plantation investment in labor• Low population densities, cheap land leading

to use of slave labor• Most slaves from Africa• Little later immigration from Europe, very

small proportion foreign-born by 1900• Most Southerners still English and Scots-Irish

(but more immigration recently)

Impact of Slavery

• From early years of settlement, slaves integral to organization, social environment

• Contributed key elements of Southern life– Speech patterns– Diet– Music

• Belief in inferiority of blacks as rationale for slavery

• Blacks and whites living in close proximity

Other Minorities• Cajuns (Southern Louisiana)– Name derived from “Acadian,” French settlers in

Acadia (now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick)– Left when British conquered New France (1763)– Remain distinctive:

• French dialect• Catholic religion• Food

• Native Americans– Forcible removal of Indians by 1830s– Descendents of those who escape removal

• Eastern Cherokee (North Carolina)• Choctaw (central Mississippi)

Religious Patterns

• Small, rural churches• Baptist denomination

dominant– Evangelists (mid-18th

century)– Resisted formal

organization– Lack of influence from later

immigration• Note difference in

southern Louisiana, southern Texas

The Civil War• Prewar distribution of slaves– Almost every county outside Appalachian

highlands– Greatest concentrations• Original plantation areas• New lands most suited to cotton production

• Largest % of Civil War battles fought on Southern soil

Economic Impacts of the Civil War

• Railroads disrupted or in disrepair• Equipment confiscated• Shipping terminals in ruins• Confederate currency and bonds worthless• Labor supply formally eliminated

(emancipation)• Large land holdings heavily taxed and/or

subdivided

Post–Civil War Transition• White reaction to emancipation:

Institutionalized segregation• Few opportunities for blacks until World War I• Greater isolation of the South• Persistent poverty:– Destruction of economic infrastructure and

plantation economy– Lack of factors for economic development:

• Local capital (used for war or drawn off by Northerners)• Credit

• Continued dependence on agriculture

Agricultural Labor

• Emancipation of blacks, white labor pool decimated by war deaths

• Few jobs in South’s small towns• Sharecropping– Involved both blacks and poor whites– Rent and repayment of loans from share of the crop– Debt perpetual, sharecropper bound to land until paid– Reinforced by “Black Codes” restricting black

movement

Development of Manufacturing• Attractions of Piedmont South:– High levels of underemployment– Opportunity to modernize factories– Lower taxes

• Cotton textile industry– Originally based in New England– Shifted south in late 19th century– Carolina Piedmont and northern Georgia– Drew other industries

• Natural and synthetic fibers• Apparel

– Economic impact• Blacks excluded• Work paid low wages

Other Industrial Development

• Railroad construction, other public improvements

• Cigarette manufacturing (North Carolina, Virginia)

• Timber resources– Furniture manufacturing (North Carolina, Virginia)– Pulp and paper

• Atlanta-Birmingham-Chattanooga triangle– Resources and low wages for iron and steel– Corporate manipulation of prices to favor Pittsburgh:

“Pittsburgh plus” pricing

Segregation

• Reconstruction (to late 1870s)– Antiblack actions localized– Black advances in certain places• Landownership • Entry to professions • Election to public office

• Jim Crow laws – Institutionalized alternative to slavery─Established virtually total legal separation

Segregation (continued)

• De jure segregation (segregation by law)– Allowed by courts if separate facilities were equal (but

they were not)– Despite daily interaction, institutionalized physical

separation• Schools• Restaurants• Recreation facilities and parks• Drinking fountains• Restrooms• Housing• Employment

• Disenfranchisement of blacks

Dual Landscapes

• Different human landscapes, one black and one white

• Little overlap in– Mississippi– Louisiana– Eastern Texas

• Common workplaces, retail shopping• Violent reaction to protest, including lynching• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

Black Outmigration• Push factors

– Jim Crow Laws, violence– Subsistence economic conditions– Severe boll weevil infestation– War in Europe, cutting off market for cotton

• Pull factors– Jobs in industry (decline in immigration from Europe)– Opportunity for a better life– Positive information/feedback from previous migrants

• Impact on the Southern economy–Most migrants 18-35 years old, most productive

workers among blacks–Old (no longer in labor force) and young (not yet in

labor force) left behind

% African American, 2000

(page 174)

Population Pyramids for Mississippi, 2000

(page 179)

Sectionalism

• Solid South– Voting by entire region as a bloc, often in

contradiction to nation as a whole– Equated war and Reconstruction with North and

Republicans– Voted Democratic

• Feeling of regional distinction • Distain by non-Southerners

The New South

• Before World War II: belief that region had seceded decades earlier

• Trends breaking down isolation– Influences from outside the region– Events affecting entire nation– Federal intervention in affairs of the South– Maturation of South’s distinctive culture

1930s South

• Heavy dependence on agriculture– Animal power (usually mules)– Hand labor– Sharecropping and tenant farming– Little processing within the South

• Capital deficient• Low-wage industry, oriented to narrow local

markets• Urban structure based on small towns

Post–World War II Agriculture

• Declined as percentage of economy• Diversified– Traditional crops still grown– New crops:• Soybeans• Livestock• Poultry

• Mechanization• End of sharecropping• Increase in farm size

Poultry Rice

Tobacco Cotton

Changes in Economic Structure

(page 180)

Urbanization

• Rural-to-urban migration since World War II– 1940: 35 cities with populations > 50,000– 1950: 42 cities with populations > 50,000– 1996: 110 cities with populations > 50,000

• Atlanta– Largest business, financial, commercial center– Home to Coca-Cola, CNN, others– Large land area, long commutes– Hosted 1996 Olympic games

Changes in Manufacturing

• Traditional industries– Steel (Alabama)– Tobacco products (North Carolina, Virginia)– Textiles (northern Georgia, Carolinas, southern

Virginia)

• New consumer goods manufacturers• Banking centers (Charlotte)• Need for more skilled labor, education

Changes in Employment StructurePercent non-agricultural labor forcein manufacturing, 1950

Percent non-agricultural labor force in manufacturing, 2000

(page 182) (page 183)

Federal Government Intervention

• Agricultural Adjustment Acts (1935)– Adjusted wages and prices in agriculture to mirror

industrial levels– Improved market for manufactured goods

• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)– Abolished separate but equal doctrine– Gradual adjustments and compliance

Cultural Integration

• Increased urbanization of blacks

• Return migration of blacks from the North

• New immigrant groups:– Latinos– Asians

Changes in regional distribution of black population

(page 185)