After William T. Sherman burned the city to ashes in his Civil War campaign in 1864, the citizens of Atlanta returned to find a completely different landscape. The railroads, once Atlanta’s source of prosperity, were now devastated, and the city lacked government buildings. Yet, the citizens were determined to bring Atlanta back from the ashes, and through a community effort, the city was rebuilt in only a year. The spirit of rebirth in the city led to the creation of the New South: a more industrialized and business-oriented South with Atlanta at its center. This new mentality brought with it great economic development, so much so that the city was nicknamed the “Chicago of the South.” But among the thriving industry and progress, one important segment of Atlanta’s population lived in a different reality: the city’s recently-freed African-Americans.
The New South relied heavily on attracting businesses to Atlanta, and was particularly focused on restoring the business ties with the North that were broken after the Civil War. In order to do so, Atlanta had to look attractive for northern businessmen, and Atlantans had to embrace northern concepts. One such concept involved the issue of race relations, and thus the city’s newspapers promoted the idea of a racially integrated South, in which blacks thrived along with whites in the city’s development. But while Southern media showcased African-American progress, the New South was ultimately a white concept. African-Americans lived in a different reality and had to forgo certain liberties to participate in Atlanta’s economic development.
Perhaps the first step in understanding the New South as a white concept is analyzing the question of race in the aftermath of the Civil War in Atlanta. Embracing the concept of the Lost Cause, by which the war was fought to preserve the southern way of life, white Americans, scholar William Link notes, saw Atlanta’s destruction as an opportunity for redefinition and rebirth as “a southern place” (61). African-Americans, on the other hand, saw the burning as the “price… for black freedom” (Link 61). While blacks saw an opportunity for the establishment of a new racial order and economic development free from white control, whites believed that emancipation had disrupted both social and economic systems, and sought for new means to control blacks (Link 61). These two perspectives were closely tied to economic development, but created a dualism in deciding Atlanta’s future. Ultimately, the white view prevailed, merging the white idea of a southern identity and racial order with Atlanta’s vision for future economic prosperity. Thus, from the moment of its creation, the New South was an essentially white concept to bring economic development and implicitly reestablish the racial order. But this concept also had to appeal to northern businessmen, who also had abolitionist views.
The New South was closely tied to the media, from the moment of its conception to its promotion of the southern environment to northern businessmen. Henry Grady, described by Link as “the ultimate New South booster,” was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution journal (141). It is because of Grady that the New South gained most of its attention, a great part of it being traced to his address at the New England Society in New York, through which the concept gained national attention (Link 138). Quoting politician Benjamin Hill, Grady showcased the South as a place once torn by slavery and secession, but now united in freedom, and aimed to get this idea of the New South to attract northern business (Link 140). Through the Constitution, Grady proclaimed that “no racial troubles… existed in Georgia,” and that southerners treated blacks very well, thus impressing northerners (Davis 136). Grady’s – and many other southern civic leaders’ – speeches were crafted to lead to the conclusion that African-Americans partook in the New South’s prosperity as much as whites did. Beyond the media however, black Atlantans lived a much different reality.
Grady’s depiction of an inclusive and racially united New South did not accurately depict reality. White southerners believed that blacks were only productive under slavery, and, when emancipation was declared, many refused to pay freedmen wages or tried to trick them into excruciating labor contracts. To assist in overseeing fair black labor practices, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created in 1865 as part of the Reconstruction measures, but the Congress-created institution was in many ways ineffective (Link 67). In addition, former slaveholders in many occasions ignored the bureau’s directives, relying on oral agreements instead of official oversight (Link 76). Moreover, many African-Americans were subject to the tenant farming system, which stripped blacks (and poor white southerners) of their economic freedom by binding them to a landlord and paying with crops instead of money.
Grady’s view of the New South did not shed light into any of these issues. In fact, Grady was a white supremacist himself, and the hypocrisy in his speech was pointed out by several black newspapers and writers in both North and South (Davis 137). When attracting northerners, Grady himself seemed to offer a compromise: racial peace through a partnership between southerners and northerners, but only if the latter acknowledged the former’s concept of white supremacy (Link 154). Naturally, these views omitted the reality of African-Americans in Atlanta. Being socially excluded, blacks had different means to partake in the New South’s economic development.
African-Americans used different tactics in an attempt to partake at the economic development brought about by the New South. Many whites saw African-Americans as degraded, non-intellectual and inferior, and blacks had to first and foremost change this view (Link 159). The Cotton States Expositions, the first one happening in 1881, were the perfect stages to showcase black progress. In those expositions, many prominent black figures embraced the idea of the “new negro,” who could transcend history and enter a “progressive middle class” (Cardon 293). Blacks challenged the concept of race inferiority, and the best example of this is seen in the 1895 exposition through the “Negro Buildings.” Such pavilions portrayed blacks as a “progressive, future-oriented people” in an attempt to change the stigma of inferiority (Cardon 291). However, as scholar Nathan Cardon points out, African-American participation in the exposition resulted in blacks presenting “a southern interpretation of their race,” embracing the very same views they tried to avoid (326). Therefore, black participation in the New South’s economic development meant that in some way blacks had to acknowledge the existing racial structure.
Perhaps this view is best exemplified by the view of one of the most famous African-American leaders of the time: Professor Booker T. Washington. In what has become one of the most famous speeches in the history of the South, Washington proposed, at the Cotton States Exposition of 1895, the “Atlanta Compromise,” by which blacks should “forgive the South” and forgo their political pursuits and focus on economic recovery instead (Seaton 52). As scholar Corey Seaton notes, Washington proposed that blacks should relinquish the pursuit of equality and focus on earning white trust, so that over time the South would willingly give them rights (58). Washington claimed that blacks should aim at industrial jobs and economic recovery, but that came at a price. As famous African-American leader W.E.B. DuBois points out, Washington’s philosophy came at the cost of black disenfranchisement, civil inferiority, and the end of higher education for African-Americans (DuBois 7). Therefore, to participate in Atlanta’s prosperity, African-Americans in one way or another acknowledged the racial order, sacrificing their struggles and liberties in the process.
Therefore, while the media promoted Atlanta’s New South as an environment in which blacks thrived and equally partook in the city’s economic development, the reality was much different to African-Americans themselves, who had to concede certain liberties to participate in this environment. The New South, then, was ultimately created for and experienced by white Atlantans. The post-Civil War period that could have established a new and more equal society instead clothed itself in new concepts to rebuild an old racial order, eventually leading to a period of segregation that lasted almost a century, whose sparks of a fragmented society still linger even today.
However, despite establishing a racially divided society, the New South also impacted the African-American community in a positive way, one that influences even contemporary Atlanta. The division brought by the New South ultimately united African-Americans in a quest for progress and equality, allowing for strong and impactful leaders, such as W.E.B. DuBois and, later in history, Martin Luther King Jr., to emerge among the community and influence not only Atlanta, but the entire world. This united community also had and continues to have an enormous cultural impact, and Atlanta is today a vibrant hub for African-American culture, and paves the way towards a truly new South.
Works Cited
Cardon, Nathan. “The South’s “New Negroes” and African American Visions of Progress at the Atlanta and Nashville International Expositions, 1895-1897.” Journal of Southern History, vol. 80, no. 2, May 2014, p. 287. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aqh&AN=95795796&site=eds-live.
“Chapter III: Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.” Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, 3/1/2006, pp. 25-36. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=34413869&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Davis, Harold E. Henry Grady’s New South. [Electronic Resource] : Atlanta, a Brave and Beautiful City. Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, c1990., 1990. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat00477a&AN=gast.2837930&site=eds-live
Link, William A. Atlanta, Cradle of the New South : Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath. The University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Civil War America. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=532689&site=eds-live.
Seaton, Corey. “‘W.E.B. Dubois & Booker T. Washington: Approaches to Developing Citizenship Post-Reconstruction in the America’.” Kola, no. 1, 2014, p. 51. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.gsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsgcl.365072224&site=eds-live.