Unit 8: “The New South” Study Guide/Key Terms
Key Vocabulary:
1. armistice: a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting
2. county unit system: a system of voting in Georgia whereby each county was allotted a certain number
of unit votes so that the candidate winning the highest popular vote in the county receives all that
county's unit votes and the one who receives a majority of the state's unit votes is nominated. In effect,
this system of allotting votes by county, with little regard for population differences, allowed rural
counties to control Georgia elections by minimizing the impact of the growing urban centers,
particularly Atlanta.
3. disenfranchisement: preventing a person or group of people from having the right to vote
4. grandfather clause: a statute enacted by many American southern states in the wake of
Reconstruction that allowed potential white voters to circumvent literacy tests, poll taxes, and other
tactics designed to disfranchise southern blacks
5. lynching: the practice of killing people by mob action outside the legal process; took place most
frequently against African-American men in the South from 1890 to the 1920s
6. New South: a phrase that has been used since the Civil War to describe the South after 1877. The term
"New South" is used in contrast to the “Old South” and the slavery-based plantation system of
the antebellum period.
7. poll tax: a tax required as a qualification for voting. After the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution
extended the vote to blacks in 1870, many southern states instituted poll taxes to prevent blacks from
voting.
8. prejudice: an opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience
9. propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a
particular political cause or point of view
10. racial violence: attacks on African Americans that occurred in the period after Reconstruction through
the first half of the 20th century
11. segregation: the enforced separation of different racial groups in a community
12. separate but equal: a legal doctrine established in the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson; justified
and permitted racial segregation as not being in breach of the Fourteenth Amendment (which
guaranteed equal protection under the law to all citizens)
13. suffrage: the right to vote in political elections
14. Talented Tenth: a term that designated a leadership class of African Americans in the early twentieth
century. The term was publicized by W. E. B. Du Bois in an influential essay, and described the
likelihood of one in ten black men becoming leaders of their race in the world through methods such as
continuing their education, writing books, or becoming directly involved in social change.
15. white primary: primary elections in Georgia in which only white voters were permitted to participate
Important People:
1. The Bourbon Triumvirate
2. Henry Grady
3. John and Lugenia Hope
4. W.E.B. DuBois
5. Booker T. Washington
6. Leo M. Frank
7. Tom Watson
8. Rebecca Latimer Felton
Significant Events:
1. Supreme Court case—Plessy v. Ferguson
2. International Cotton Exposition
3. The 1906 Atlanta Riot
4. Leo Frank Case