White Supremacy & Post Slavery-Slavery
· Cotton 1830’s = 4 million acres / 1890’s 30 million acres
· Southern economy began to diversify during & after
Reconstruction
· Iron & Steel introduced
· For example, Birmingham population, from 3000 to 130,000 (1880 to
1910) due to Industry – Memphis rose from 23,000 to 100,000 by 1900
· This increased social mobility
· Democrats & Populists (1890’s) actively pursued Black voters –
this ended by 1900
· 1890’s bring poll taxes and literacy tests
· Between 1896 & 1904 registered Black voters in Louisiana fell
from 130,000 to 1350
· Jim Crow laws came into effect in 1890’s culminating in Plesy vs.
Ferguson in 1896 – Separate but equal provisions
· This marked the beginning of institutionalized caste system in the
south
· Chain gangs (convict labor) kept in order by white guards
performed labor for private contractors = corporate slavery in all but
the name
· Lynch laws – mobs killed on average 100 Blacks a year from 1890 to
1925 (for insults or perceived sexual contact) add in random violence
(torture, burning & castration)
· A terrorist campaign designed to create fear among the population
and remove specific individuals
· 1915 D.W. Griffith’s movie “Birth of a Nation” used the potent
medium of film to propagate a racist myth of racism &
reconstruction (re-birth of KKK)
· As a response, Blacks move North (Detroit, Chicago, New York,
Philadelphia)