African Americans and the New South
Between 1860 and 1865 the U.S. experienced its most divisive war in history – the
Civil War. 625 thousand lost their life, equal to the total of all other U.S. wars
combined.
The main cause of the war concerned the abolition of slavery.
After the war and the legal emancipation of the former slaves, Congress passed
the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to guarantee the nation’s sacrifices of war.
The nation went through a 12 year readjustment period called Reconstruction, that
most historians consider a failure.
Congress did create the Freedmen’s Bureau that acted like an early welfare service
for freed slaves. It tried to resettle African Americans on confiscated southern land
and made other promises it could not keep. (Discuss 40 acres and a mule) Before
its demise, it did manage to teach 200,000 freedmen how to read.
After reconstruction ended, the south became ‘democratically solid,’ or the ‘solid
south.’
Solid South: - define – due to the harsh legislative punishment directed at
the south by the Republican controlled Congress, the South supported the
Democratic Party for the next 100 years.
The North, tired of war and reconstruction, began to address the issues that were
brought on by the industrialization and urbanization with the Civil War.
Amendments in place. The South was left with its devastation and collapsed
economy.
Some Southerners, called redeemers, promoted a new vision for the South to be
built on industrial growth and a modern transportation system. This view of
the ‘new South’ had some successes. Industry was expanded and railroad lines
were constructed but for the most part the South remained largely agricultural and
the poorest region in the country.
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The old agricultural plantation economic system was completely in shambles – but
the white landowners still owned the land and the freed African American had the
labor.
The post-war Southern economy settled and a new perverted type of agriculture
developed – sharecropping.
Define: sharecropping – the landowner would let freed slaves and poor whites
farm their land – seed and farm supplies would be furnished. The ‘sharecropper’
would return ½ of the total crop to the landowner as payment.
Sharecroppers strived to maintain their subsistence and usually stayed in debt to
the landowner or local merchants.
In a sense, sharecropping evolved into a new type of slavery.
Some African Americans fled the South and sharecropping, and migrated to
Kansas in hopes of taking advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862. The
Exodusters 1879 – 1880 movement died due to bad land, lack of capital, and little
support.
As the freed slave struggled for subsistence, the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) organized
to intimidate blacks from exercising their freedoms given to them by the legislative
process and the enormous loss of life.
The secret society, organized by Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, acted as an invisible
kingdom, burning crosses, flogging, lynching and other forms of intimidation to
challenge the new reality set forth by the laws of the land. New federal laws
against the Klan forced it underground but its activities and intimidation in the
‘dark of night’ was more terrifying.
The practice of lynching, the most horrifying act of nativist intimidation was first
addressed by an unlikely opponent – Ida B. Wells – born in Holly Springs, MS.
Ida B. Wells was freed by emancipation; after seeing a friend murdered by
lynching she used her education to propel an anti-lynching campaign through
pamphlets and lectures. Later in life, Ida B. Wells became a founding member of
the NAACP – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
took up the Anti-Lynching cause.
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During the Civil War, President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation
(1863). Even though it actually did not free a single slave (because slaves were in
the South – outside of Union control). It did give the war a “purposed” focus. As
Union forces marched South, more and more slaves were liberated.
Freedom actually was assured with the passage of the 13th amendment (1865)
“neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist . . . “
In 1868, the 14th amendment was passed and had an immediate and long range
significance to the nation.
First it declared all persons born or ‘naturalized’ in the U.S. were citizens – thus
the 14th amendment gave former slaves their citizenship.
The 14th amendment also stated‘No state should make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the U.S.; no shall any state deprive any person
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, no deny any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’
Significance of the 14th amendment:
 Former slaves are citizens
 States (not just the federal government) are required by the Constitution to
uphold the rights of citizens
 The definitions of the vague terms due process of law and equal protection
of the law would be were originally put in place to give bill of rights
guarantees to the freed slaves, but the broadening of their definitions
expanded the liberties and rights for every American.
With the passage of the 14th amendment, protections for the freed slaves were
firmly in place . . . except the Supreme Court was not totally on board. In 1873, a
series of cases reached the court called the Slaughterhouse cases.
In the Slaughterhouse cases the Supreme Court said a person’s rights were
protected by the Constitution’s 14th amendment as long as those rights are spelled
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out in the Constitution such as the first amendment rights. So other rights given by
states were not constitutionally protected.
So . . . the strong 14th amendment passed by the legislative branch of government
was immediately weakened by the judicial branch. But over time, the 14th
amendment would regain its strength to become the most important of all civil
rights tools.
In 1869, Congress passed the last of the three Civil War amendments – the 15th
amendment which prohibited any state from denying a citizen from the right to
vote ‘on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude’ . . . said
differently the 15th amendment gave African Americans the right to vote.
Traditionally women abolitionists have always been vocal in the charge against
slavery but some, surprisingly, came out against the 15th amendment. Why?
Women still did not have the right to vote.
Even though the 15th amendment gave African Americans the right to vote, the
process of voting required all three civil war amendments; freedom, citizenship,
and the ‘right to vote’ were required before a ballot was cast.
With a weakened 14th amendment, states began to add restrictions on the 15th
amendment such as:
 Poll taxes – pay to vote
 Literacy test – read/write to vote
 Grandfather clauses – allowed poor whites to vote and by-pass restrictions,
because their grandfather voted.
In 1896 a landmark case came before the Supreme Court, Plessey vs Ferguson.
Brief the case.
Facts: Louisiana passed a law that provided for segregated, ‘separate but equal’
railroad cars. A plan of civil disobedience was put together to test the
legality of the law. 1/8 black and 7/8 white, Homer Plessey was chosen to
challenge the law. He bought a train ticket, entered the ‘white’ car, refused
to leave and was arrested as planned. The case made its way to the Supreme
Court.
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Constitutional question before the court:
Can the states constitutionally enact legislation requiring persons of
different races to use ‘separate but equal’ segregated facilities?
Court decision:
Yes! States can, under the constitution, require presons of
different races to use ‘separate but equal’ segregated facilities.
Significance of Plessey vs Ferguson 1896 – now that the Supreme Court lynched
the 14th amendment by giving legal sanction to segregation, old black codes and
Jim Crow laws were buffed-up, honed and made ready for use.
Jim Crow Laws were laws that challenged the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments by
preventing African-Americans from achieving economic, political and cultural
power and equality.
Now Jim Crow laws were constitutionally legal for states to pass the separate but
equal doctrine will rule.
The legal term for legalized segregation is DeJure Segregation – segregation
imposed by law.
Examples include:
 Eat at restaurants
 Drinking form water fountains
 Using the rest room
 Attending school
 Going to movies
 And many more
Discrimination and the Jim Crow fueled hostile racial climate left African
Americans in a nearly powerless condition.
In response to discrimination the philosophy of African American leader Booker T.
Washington became widely accepted by the white world.
Profile Booker T. Washington
 Former slave
 College grad from Hampton Institute, Va.
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 Established an industrial and agricultural school at Tuskegee Alabama
 Tuskegee’s Agricultural Department was headed by George Washington
Carver
 Booker T became the most dominate spokesman for African Americans as
far as whites were concerned.
Before a white crowd in Atlanta Georgia, in 1895 Booker T. Washington delivered
his famous Atlanta Compromise Speech:
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling
a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and
not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our
opportunities . . . you and your families will be surrounded by the most
patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen.
In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet
one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
Essentially, Booker T. Washington proposed the theory of Gradualism on behalf
of the African American race as a compromise on how to assimilate into the white
world.
The proposal
 Whites would fund and support vocational training for African Americans
 African Americans would learn skilled trades and stay away from pursuing
racial equality; they would not challenge discrimination.
 The philosophy of Gradualism would lead to assimilation that was
acceptable to the white world.
 Under gradualism, Booker T. encouraged blacks to work hard, buy land to
live on, and prove they were worthy of their freedom and rights.
Many African American leaders believed that the philosophy of the Atlanta
Compromise and Gradualism was a sell-out to segregation and discrimination.
One such leader was W.E.B. DuBois.
Profile W.E.B. DuBois
 William Edward Burghardt DuBois (WEB) was born in Massachusetts – and
never a slave
 He was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard
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 His political and economic philosophy for African Americans was put forth
in his major work, The Souls of the Black Folks (1903).
DuBois challenged the philosophy of Gradualism presented by Booker T.
Washington by arguing that political and social rights were a prerequisite for
economic independence.
Even though Booker T. advocated vocational education, DuBois advocated higher
education for African Americans. He also advocated challenging discrimination at
all levels. Washington viewed DuBois as militant and radical.
In 1903, DuBois formulated his Talented Tenth theory in an essay of the same
title:
Discuss excerpts from The Talented Tenth
Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more
quickly raised than by the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and
character? Was there ever a nation on Gods fair earth civilized from the
bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top
downward that culture filters. The talented tenth rises and pulls all that are
worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of human
progress; and the two historic mistakes which have hindered that progress
were the thinking first, that no more could ever rise, save the few already
risen; or second, that it would better the up risen to pull the risen down.
He argued that the newly emancipated people needed leaders and teachers with a
high degree of liberal knowledge.
In 1905 DuBois met with a group of black intellectuals in Niagara Falls, Canada,
to discuss a plan of protest and action aimed at securing equal rights for blacks –
the group became known as the Niagara movement.
In 1909, the Niagara movement merged with other movements, including
progressive whites, to form the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP). Its mission was to abolish all forms of segregation
and discrimination and promote higher education opportunities for African
American children. They vowed to use the Constitution and 14th Amendment to
pursue legal remedies.
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In the early 1920s a new African American movement developed under the
leadership of the charismatic Marcus Garvey.
Profile Marcus Garvey
 Born in Jamaica in 1887
 Came the U.S. in 1916
 Publisher of the Negro World, a black nationalistic newspaper that stressed
Black Nationalism.
Marcus Garvey stressed the need for blacks to return to Africa and participate in
the building of a great nation. To put his plan in motion he called on blacks to
become economically self-sufficient, embrace separationism and prepare to return
to Africa.
The Back-to-Africa movement became an international movement and Garvey
was proclaimed the ‘provisional President of Africa.’ Mainstream black leaders
viewed Garvey as the ‘most dangerous enemy to the Negro race,’ because,
according to DuBois, his movement could undermine all the efforts the NAACP
and others made toward black rights.
Garvey pursued his dream by purchasing some used ships for transportation of the
thousands that joined the Back-to-Africa separatist’s movement. Unlike legal
segregation, the separatist Back-to-Africa movement participants practiced
DeFacto Segregation or segregation by choice.
Garvey’s movement ran into problems when the federal government found him
guilty of fraud charges concerning the stock company formed to purchase the ships
of the Black Star Steamship Line.
The Back-to-African movement collapsed when Garvey was tried, convicted and
sent to jail.
Even though mainstream African American leaders disagreed with the separatist
movement of Garvey, they did accredit him with awakening the call for black pride
and Black Nationalism.
Even though a mass migration of African Americans Back-to-Africa failed to
materialize, another one did. Push/pull effects between the North and South led to
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the Great Black Migration, the movement of a million people from the South to
the North.
Push/pull effects:
 Deteriorating race relations
 Destruction of the cotton crop by the boll weevil
 Job opportunities in the North that opened up as white workers were drafted
into WWI
Note: the Great Migration continued through the 1920s, it slowed the next decade
during the depression, and then picked back up as a result of WWII. In all, over
four million African Americans moved north.
From the Gilded Age forward for the next half century, no significant federal
legislation was put forward to help the freed blacks – even the progressive
movement addressed their smallest issues.
But, the NAACP, new leadership, Black Nationalism, coupled with literary and
artistic expression supported by the outstanding war records of the black soldiers in
WWI and WWII placed the control of their own history in their hands.
Activity for students: students have been exposed to DeJure and DeFacto
segregation. Have groups give examples of:
DeJure Segregation: segregation that is supported by ‘separate but equal
doctrines’ such as race separated schools, hotels, restaurants, water fountains, etc.
(Plessey vs. Ferguson)
DeFacto Segregation: segregation that exists as a matter of custom or ‘in fact’
Examples would include a neighborhood that is predominately one race or a
church that is predominately white or black.
DeJure Integration: laws requiring the integration of public schools restaurants,
swimming pools, beaches, buses, hotels, lunch counters, etc.
DeFacto Integration: the ‘agreed integration of DeFacto segregation such as a
segregated church willing to integrate.
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