Jumpin' Jim Crow

I. Prophets and Goals of the New South

a. Henry Grady – editor of the Atlanta Constitution; declared that the in his New South Creed that the old South of slavery and agriculture had to give way to a new South of diverse industry and racial harmony (note: he does not proclaim the need in the South for racial equality).

b. Economic Growth in the New South

i. Textile mills

ii. Tobacco (the Duke family and the establishment of the American Tobacco Company)

iii. Coal and iron ore – Birmingham is discovered as a source of low grade iron ore, and the city begins life as a manufacturing center

iv. Lumber

v. Petroleum

vi. Hydroelectric power

*Most of these industries were based upon either extracting raw materials from the ground (and sending them elsewhere, or they were based upon agricultural practices). Even textile mills were dependent upon the supply of cotton that southern farmers could provide.

c. Agriculture in the New South

i. Problems

1. Land ownership

a. Sharecropping

b. Tenant farming

2. Credit—the crop-lien system – farmers in the South, both sharecroppers and tenant farmers, operated in mostly a cashless society

3. Collapsing prices – prices worldwide for farm products were spiraling downward throughout this period, meaning that farmers got less and less return on their investment per year.

ii. Result: Stagnation. The concentration of ownership of the land, while tying people to the land through the system of sharecropping and tenant farming, kept wages depressed that resulted in economic stagnation.

d. The Political Leaders of the New South

i. Who and what was a Bourbon? – the same as a Redeemer, only named by an enemy rather than a sympathizer.

ii. Bourbon ideology

1. Allied politically with eastern conservatives – interested in seeing the powers of the Federal government reigned in

2. Allied economically with eastern capitalists – Bourbons were closely allied with eastern capitalists because this is where they obtained most of their financing; southern banks were too small to handle the financing needed by most Bourbon planters.

3. Retention of current social and economic system – Bourbons were most interested in retaining the then current social and economic system, because this system no only allowed them to retain control over southern blacks, but also over southern whites.

e. Effects of the Bourbon retrenchment

i. Greatly reduced government expenditures

1. Slashed spending on education

2. System of convict leasing (Parchman Farm and system of arresting blacks for “vagrancy” during harvest times; system also depressed wages for industrial workers

3. Repudiation of state debts – refused to pay state debts incurred during Reconstruction.

ii. Blacks and the New South

1. Flexibility in Bourbon race relations

a. Black voting – the rights of blacks to vote in elections was little disturbed during the early years of Bourbon rule—although steps were taken to ensure that blacks would have little say in the government composed as a result of these elections.

b. Little strict segregation

II. Rise of Populism – Populism today used to describe anyone who can be characterized as a demagogue; in the past, historians have often considered Populists racists and small minded.

a. Farmer’s Alliance

i. National Farmers’ Alliance (Northern Alliance

ii. National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union (Southern Alliance)

iii. Colored Farmers’ National Alliance (also southern, covering black farmers who where not allowed into the Southern Alliance)

b. Popularity – Populism in general, and the Farmers’ Alliances in particular, were enormously popular, and threatened to become a viable third party when the group organized politically as the People’s Party. Strength was particularly in the Plains states of Kansas and Nebraska, as well as the southwestern states of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana

i. 1890 Election

1. Kansas – Alliance supporters won 4/5ths of the seats in the legislature

2. Nebraska – allied with Democrats to elect governor, and young William Jennings Bryan courted Alliance voters in his successful bid for a Senate seat.

ii. Tom Watson – Georgia politician who exemplified to tentative efforts of southern populists to cross-racial boundaries. Poor whites were beginning to realize that they had more in common with poor blacks than they did with the rich Bourbon whites.

1. Playing the race card – by judicious use of election time violence and racial epitaphs to discourage abandoning the Democratic Party, as well as appeals to Southern sympathies to those people who removed the Yankee threat and “redeemed the South.”

c. Institution of Jim Crow

i. Purpose – to divide poor whites from allying with poor blacks

ii. Political disenfranchisement

1. Mississippi plan

a. Residency requirement – had to live at the same address for two years (difficult for poor farmers to meet this requirement)

b. Disqualifications for certain crimes

c. Poll tax

d. Literacy test (with understanding clause)

*Remind class that this is the era in the South before the Secret ballot.

d. Segregation in the South

i. Supreme Court

1. Civil Rights Cases (1883) – Supreme Court decided to allow individuals to discriminate, which meant that blacks could legally be forced to use segregated public facilities (restaurants, hotels).

2. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – Plessy was hired by the railroad to violate the ordinance in New Orleans because they wanted to avoid the expense of having to have separate railroad passenger cars for whites and blacks. Established the legal fallacy of “separate but equal”.

e. Organized violence against blacks

i. Lynching – more than just vigilante justice; a system of terror utilized to ensure that blacks behaved in the “proper manner”—that is, in a subservient manner

1. Ritualized mutilation – ears, fingers (used as “souvenirs”), and genitalia

2. Ritualized torture – burning, mutilation

3. Public spectacle - meant to intimidate African Americans into accepting white rule