Week 9. Jim Crow and Industrialization

"New South"
the idea of a new economic order in the South: small family farms and a diversified industry
in industry the idea worked: textile mills, tobacco factories, coal mines, steel plants, and lumber (1870s- )
in agriculture, failed -- particularly devastating for blacks:
sharecropping (owned nothing, worked for supplies and half of the crop)
tenancy (kept 3/4 of cash crops and 2/3 of subsistence crops)
and crop lien system (merchants gave supplies in return for mortgages of farmers' crops)
all inefficient, did not allow to diversify from old staple crops

Blacks disenfranchised (1890- )
Bourbon Redeemers have political power after Radical Republicans after 1877
at first tolerated black politicians and votes
in 1890s black voters upset the balance of power between Bourbons and the new populist farmer party
Mississippi after 1890 requirements for voting:
residence - 2 years in state, one in election district
disqualified if convicted of petty and other crimes
poll tax- had to be paid by Feb 1 of the election year, so officials could lose it by voting day
literacy (50 percent blacks and 12 percent whites illiterate, "understanding" as a loophole for whites)
Louisiana 1898 "grandfather clause" -- illiterate whites could vote if their grandfather qualified in 1867 when blacks were still disenfranchised-- later adopted by other states
Democratic primaries excluded blacks

Segregation ("Jim Crow")
1883 Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act which prohibited discrimination against blacks by state did not apply to corporations or individuals
this made State-legislated "separate but equal" segregation possible
separate public facilities, seating in streetcars and railroads, hospitals, employment
first in Mississippi in 1888
Plessy v. Fergusson in Louisiana 1890, - octoroon (8/1 black) Homer Plessy refused to leave a white railroad car and was convicted
Supreme Court upheld in 1896 - segregation laws generally recognized as exercize of state police power
lynchings

Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois
Washington wanted to make the best of segregation and promoted black business and industry (founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881)
DuBois argued for full black civil rights, political action, and higher education, leading black intellectual

Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise Speech
delivered at Atlanta Cotton States and International exposition in 1895
white Southerners lauded it
DuBois criticized it as accomodationist
Washington recorded portion of this speech in 1903

Western Settlement
14 new states created after the Civil War
migration included African-Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, and Indians
aided by Railroads 200,000 miles by 1897
Homestead Act of 1862 facilitated land settlement
mining, railroad building, open range cattle farming (1866-1886), dry-land farming
male violent culture although exaggerated in movies (44 shootings 1877-1883)

Indians forced to give up their lands
Indians forced to leave their hunting grounds into reservations on least valuable lands
by mid-1880s white hunters destroy buffalo herds, necessary for Indian subsistence
Indians resisted:
Great Sioux War - at Little Bighorn Sioux and Cheyenne Indians surrounded and destroyed George Custer and 210 soldiers - but eventually they also were forced into reservation
Apache Chief Geronimo fought in the Southwest but was captured in 1886
1908 at Wounded Knee, South Dakota soldiers kill 200 Sioux who came to surrender after a Ghost Dance rebellion

1887 Dawes Act:
granted citizenship and land ownership to Indians
land in trust of the tribe for 25 years, then Indians become full citizens
1901 Five Civilized Tribes, by 1924 all Indiansgranted citizenship
as a result, tribes lost 86 out of 130 million acres between 1887-1934

The end of the Frontier
1890 census could no longer locate a frontier line where population was fewer than 2 people per square mile
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"
1893 Address to the American Historical Association
declared the end of the frontier culture that defined American democracy:
democratic policy
society open to immigration
free market economy
rugged individualism
Turner believed that these features could only survive away from urban America as long as there was land for new settlement
Turner ignored the role of women and nonwhite Americans in frontier culture

Industrialization
the second Industrial Revolution -- since mid-nineteenth century in the United States and Germany
first revolution (Britain) -- textile machines, steam engines, and iron furnaces
second revolution:
national transportation and communication network (telegraph, railroad)
electric power (trolleys, subways)
scientific research used in industry (telephones, farm machinery, improved industrial production)
result: large-scale capital-intensive industrial production (Rockefeller, & oil, Carnegie and steel)
national market emerged (mail-order Sears and Roebuck catalog, 1890s-)

Labor
labor conditioned worsened
permanent unions emerged
industrial unions (Knights of Labor)
craft unions (American Federation of Labor)
1886 Haymarket riots where during an anarchist meeting someone threw a bomb and killed a policeman. Anarchists were arrested and some hanged.
rise of socialism (Eugene Debs won 6 percent of the popular vote in 1912)
communism (Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies)

Urbanization and Popular Culture
1860-1910 urban population grew from 6 million to 44 million; by 1920, more than half lived in cities
created a distinct urban way of life (streetcars, immigrant labor, poverty)

Immigration
in 1900-1910 41 percent of people coming into cities came from abroad
1880- most immigrants came from Southern and Eastern Europe (Jewish, Italian, Polish, etc)
immigrants were processed at the Ellis Island
they settled in their own neighborhoods with their own stores, theaters, societies
worked in sweatshops, coal mines, textile mills
again there was a nativist response that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

New Popular Culture
served middle and working class people
vaudeville
P.T. Barnum museum
early movies