HIST 1312 1st Edition Lecture 11 Outline of Last Lecture I The Overthrow of Reconstruction a Reconstruction s Opponents b A Reign of Terror c The Liberal Republicans d The North s Retreat e The Triumph of Redeemers f The Disputed Election and Bargain of 1877 g The End of Reconstruction Outline of Current Lecture II The Segregated South a b c d e f g h i III a b c d e f g h i The Redeemers in Power The Failure of the New South Dream Black Life in the South The Kansas Exodus The Decline of Black Politics The Elimination of Black Voting The Law of Segregation The Rise of Lynching Politics Religion and Memory Who is an American The Race Problem The Anti German Crusade Toward Immigration Restriction Group Apart Mexicans and Asian Americans The Color Line Roosevelt Wilson and Race W E B Du Bois and the Revival of Black Protest Closing Ranks The Great Migration These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute j Racial Violence North and South k The Rise of Garveryism Current Lecture The Segregated South j The Redeemers in Power o The failure of Populism in the South opened the door for the full imposition of a new radical order o The coalition of merchants planters and business entrepreneurs who dominated the region s politics after 1877 called themselves the Redeemers since they claimed to have redeemed the region from the alleged horrors of misgovernment and black rule o They had moved to undo much of Reconstruction o The hardest hit were the new public school systems o Poor whites suffered but blacks suffered the most as the gap between expenditures for black and white pupils widened steadily o New laws authorized the arrest of virtually any person without employment and greatly increased the penalties for petty crimes o Every southern state placed at least a portion of its convicted criminals the majority of them blacks imprisoned for minor offenses in the hands of private businessmen o Railroads mines and lumber companies competed for this new form of cheap involuntary labor o Conditions in labor camps were often barbaric with disease ride and the death rates high k The Failure of the New South Dream o During the 1880s Atlanta editor Henry Grady tirelessly promoted the promise of a New South an era of prosperity based on industrial expansion and agricultural diversification o In fact while planters merchants and industrialist prospered the region as a whole sank deeper and deeper into poverty o Some industry did develop but since the main attraction for investors were the South s low wages and taxes and the availability of convict labor these enterprises made little contribution to the regional economic development o Southern cities were mainly export centers for cotton tobacco and rice with little industry or skilled labor l Black Life in the South o As the most disadvantaged rural southerners black farmers suffered the most from the region s conditions o In most of the Deep South African Americans owned a smaller percentage of land in 1900 than they had at the end of Reconstruction o In southern cities the network of institutions created after the Civil War served as the foundation for increasingly diverse black urban communities o They supported the growth of the black middle class but the labor market was rigidly kept divided among racial lines o In most occupations the few unions that existed in the South excluded blacks forming yet another barrier to their economic advancement m The Kansas Exodus o Trapped at the bottom of a stagnant economy some blacks sought a way out through emigration from the South o In 1879 and 1880 an estimated 40 000 to 60 000 African Americans migrated to Kansas seeking political equality freedom from violence access to education and economic opportunity o Those promoting the Exodus distributed flyers and lithographs picturing Kansas as an idyllic land or rural plenty o Despite deteriorating prospects in the South most African Americans had little alternative but to stay in the region o The real expansion of job opportunities was taking place in northern cities o But most northern employers refused to offer jobs to blacks in the expanding industrial economy preferring to hire white migrants from rural areas and immigrants from Europe n The Decline of Black Politics o Neither black voting nor black office holding came to an abrupt end in 1877 o Nonetheless political opportunities became more and more restricted o Not until the 1990s would the number of black legislators in the South approach the level seen during Reconstruction o With black men of talent and ambition turning away from politics the banner of political leadership passed to black women activists o The National Association of Colored Women 1896 brought together local and regional women s clubs to press both for women s rights and racial uplift o By insisting on the right of black women to be considered as respectable as their white counterparts the women reformers challenged the racial ideology that consigned all blacks to the status of degraded second class citizens o For nearly a generation after the end of The Reconstruction despite fraud and violence black southerners continued to cast ballots in large numbers o Despite the limits of these alliances especially those involving the Populists the threat of biracial political insurgency frightened the ruling Democrats and contributed greatly to the disenfranchisement movement o The Elimination of Black Voting o Between 1890 and 1906 every southern state enacted laws or constitutional provisions meant to eliminate the black votes o The most popular devices were the poll tax a fee that each citizen had to pay in order to retain the right to vote literacy tests and the requirement that a prospective voter demonstrate to election officials an understanding of the state constitution o Six southern states also adopted a grandfather clause exempting from the new requirements descendants of persons eligible to vote before the Civil War when only whites could cast ballots in the South o The racial intent of the grandfather clause was so clear that the Supreme Court in 1915 invalidated such laws for violating the 15th Amendment o o Numerous poor and illiterate whites also lost the right to vote Disenfranchisement led directly to the rise of a generation of southern demagogues who mobilized white voters by extreme appeals to racism o As late as