The New South

2/1/18

By the late 1860s, Southerners were calling for a more diversified economy.

- Cotton was no longer king

- Calls for industrialization

- The “Solid South”  No Republican presidential candidate carried a Southern state

between 1877-1920.

Henry Grady was a proponent of the “New South”.  he was the hot-shot journalists of the

times

- He argued:

o The US are no longer 2 separate nations

o Industrialization is taking over plantation agriculture

o Race relations have changed

 Blacks are partners with whites

- Editor and part-owner of Atlanta Constitution

o Advocated all things that promoted the prosperity of the nation

o Focused on economics and race relations

Economics of the New South was evolving, dependent on federal grant money

- Reconstruction: railroads, ports, roads, communication systems

- “from farm to factory”

- Encouraged Northern and foreign investment in Southern industry

 - Richard H. Edmonds, The Manufacturers’ Record, headed the “farm to factory”

movement

o Goals: encourage outside investment in the South and promote industry.

- By 1900, over 400 cotton mills  double since 1880

Discrimination in the New South

- Racist hiring practices benefitted whites

- Blacks forced to take unskilled jobs

- Mill owners justified discrimination by saying that “whites suffered” in competition for

agricultural jobs prior to the Civil War.

- Mill owners threatened to hire black workers if white workers organized into labor

unions.

- The Black Codes took property ownership and citizenship away from African Americans.

o 14th Amendment in response  all persons, if born or naturalized in the United

States are citizens.

- Southerners came up with laws to block African Americans from voting.

o 15th Amendment in response  Right to vote cannot be denied by the United

States

Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

- Fraternal organization

- Used fear, violence, and intimidation

- Persecution to prevent blacks from voting

- Lots of white southern democrats

Southerner’s led the world in coal production by 1900

- However, coal was still controlled by Northern investors

- Tobacco was a major industry by 1900.

o Also, controlled by northerners

Plessy v. Ferguson (1897)

- “separate but equal” conforms to Fourteenth Amendment

o legalized segregation

o holds until Brown v. Board of Education

- Decision used to justify all forms of segregation