1. American History Reconstruction
The New South
American History
Reconstruction

2. Southern Objectives Following War
Abandon one crop agriculture
Develop all resources of the rich land
Build up industries

3. Industry Railroad built to transport goods
Large amount of labor available
Poor whites
Newly freed blacks
Northern investors built factories
Textile mills, ironworks, lumber projects, sugar refineries
Mill owners – owned houses of workers
Owned stores to buy goods
Cities Grow – new cities built (Birmingham, Alabama) – junction of 2 railroad lines

4. Agriculture Large plantations broken up
Tenant farming – share cropping
Agricultural Progress
Improved machines
Agricultural colleges (Alabama and Virginia)
Fertilizers
Crops
Sugar, cotton, rice, corn, tobacco

5. Truck Farming Fresh fruit and vegetables Longer growing season
Oranges, apples, watermelons, peaches, strawberries
Longer growing season
Cheap labor
Railroad cars and refrigerated cars

6. Education State provided funds
Reluctance of taxpayers to support public schools with tax money
Segregated schools cost more
As economics improved in the South, so did the education

7. Sharecropping System Blacks farmed on former plantation
Gave large portions of their crop to landlord for rent of land, tools, seed, & work animals
Purchased food and clothing from white owned store
Became deeper and deeper in debt each season
Rarely saw cash
Diet of fat meat and corn bread kept them ill most of the time
Females were servants for white families

8. “Solid South” Politics – Democrat Hatred for Republicans
All electoral votes for president went to democratic candidates
Blacks denied right to vote (for Republicans)
Literacy tests
Grandfather clauses
Poll taxes

9. African American Leaders
Booker T Washington
Son of a slave mother and white father
Received vocational Hampton Institute (VA)
Founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
Insisted that voc ed was necessary to probe black people with the skills needed to earn a living (didn’t think liberal arts ed was essental)

10. Spoke out against lynching's and illegal discrimination
Believed the blacks would make more progress by avoiding protests and emphasizing education and by owning their own businesses
"In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

11. African American Leaders
W.E.B. DuBois
Born in Massachusetts
Well educated
Wrote “Souls of Black Folk”
Criticized Booker T Washington
Urged broader education for blacks
Urged blacks to DEMAND rights to achieve full equality and opportunity

12. Organized the Niagara Movement
Niagara Falls, NY
Demanded the end to all unequal treatment based on race or color
Founded the NAACP
Worked through the courts to end restrictions on voting and other civil rights
“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”

13. Jim Crow Laws
Laws passed by the Southern states to keep African Americans “in their place”

14. (1896) Plessey v Ferguson Homer Plessy 1/8 Black
Rode a ‘white” railroad car to challenge Jim Crow laws
Supreme Court rule
Separate but equal is acceptable

15. Closure
How do you think that the race issue should have been resolved in the New South?
Write a paragraph to support your answer.