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Now that we have looked at what happened in the West after the Civil War, let’s take a look at the South. Remember that Reconstruction ended in 1877 due to the withdrawal of the federal troops who had enforced it. Let’s find out what happened after Reconstruction ended.
The “New South”
The term “New South” was coined by Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, in 1874. Grady asserted that “The Old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth.” According to his vision, the New South was like a clean slate. If Southern leaders made an effort, though, they could create a new society that was liberated from the plantation system and create a modern society of small farms, thriving industries, and bustling cities. However, even with some industrial advancements, agriculture based on sharecropping and tenant farming continued to be the primary economic activity in the South.
Jim Crow Laws
In 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited state governments from discriminating against people because of race, but did not restrict private organizations or individuals from doing so. This allowed for the passage of Jim Crow laws: state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the South. While the Fourteenth Amendment had granted African Americans the right to vote, these Jim Crow laws found ways to prevent them from exercising that right by introducing literacy tests (individuals can vote only if they can read a specific text), poll taxes (individuals can vote only if they have the money to pay a tax), and grandfather clauses (individuals can vote only if their grandfather could vote). These, along with the threat of violence, effectively worked around the Constitutional Amendment to limit the exercise of the rights.
Plessy v. Ferguson
One of the Jim Crow laws was Louisiana’s Separate Car Act. It required separate railway cars for Blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Plessy—who was seven-eighths white but still legally Black—agreed to participate in a test to legally challenge the act. Plessy was asked to vacate the whites-only car; he refused and was arrested. His lawyers argued that the act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The case, Plessy v. Ferguson, went to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the state law was constitutional as long as the facilities provided were “separate but equal.” This provided legal justification for segregation in the South until the separate but equal doctrine was overturned in the 1950s.
