|
After the Civil War, Virginians embraced economic development and the new technologies that were
revolutionizing everyday life. At the same time, however, they resisted political and social change, especially
racial equality. As a result of this dichotomy, living standards improved and Virginia attained the highest
income level of any southern state, but the political system became less democratic and society was
rigidly segregated by race. This was the paradox of "The New South."
Reconstruction
The first episode in this story is called Reconstruction. As black slavery had been a chief cause
of the Civil War, so black freedom -- its extent and implications -- was the main issue of Reconstruction.
Radical Reconstruction by the Republican Congress happened first in Virginia. Gains for African Virginians
came rapidly in the late 1860s, but Conservatives -- Democrats thought it felicitous to embrace this name
-- recaptured power sooner in Virginia than elsewhere. To be recognized fully by the federal government,
however, Virginia had to enfranchise black men. With self-help and the ballot, blacks were able to
advance their interests for two decades. The so-called Readjuster government of the early 1880s
abolished the whipping post -- a form of public punishment for blacks only -- and favored "readjusting"
Virginia's pre-war debt. Instead of repaying the full amount with interest, it freed funds for education
and social needs.
However, the 1885 election of Governor Fitzhugh Lee,
Robert E. Lee's nephew, inaugurated the
heyday of the Confederate veteran in politics. One-party rule began, culminating in the 1902
constitutional convention that greatly reduced the number of eligible voters, especially blacks,
other Republicans, and poor whites. Ironically, this was touted as a progressive measure to
combat corruption. Virginia politics came under the domination of Thomas S. Martin from his
election to the U.S. Senate in 1893 until his death in 1919. The prohibition of intoxicating
beverages was a major issue of his era, and was achieved in 1916. Then, from the 1920s
to the 1960s, "incontestably what runs Virginia is the Byrd machine, the most urbane and
genteel dictatorship in America" in the words of author John Gunther. Actually, it was not
a political machine in the usual sense and preferred to be known as the Organization. Its
personnel were not venal, nor did they steal elections, but by controlling voter registration,
the Organization kept a stranglehold on the political process.
Race and Segregation
For some eighty years a few men controlled the present and programmed the future. Black
equality was not part of their vision. In place of slavery, they erected a thoroughgoing system
of second-class citizenship and rigid segregation. Economic opportunities for blacks were few.
In rural areas they often were sharecroppers kept perpetually in a form of debt bondage. In
cities they were largely confined to menial jobs and domestic service. Their housing, schooling,
and medical care were inferior to that of whites. Social segregation, however, forced the black
community to develop its own churches, colleges, banks, newspapers, barber shops, beauty
salons, funeral parlors, burial societies, and sports teams. Out of these institutions emerged a
black middle class and role models for youth.
Excluded from voting and permanently relegated to second-class status, blacks endured appalling
condescension. In the face of these obstacles, they had to look to their own communities and institutions
for hope. Foremost among these was the church. Blacks saw themselves, like the Hebrews in ancient
Egypt, as enslaved, then freed, then wandering in the wilderness for many years, yet still hoping for a
"promised land" of equality, dignity, and opportunity. By 1880, freedmen had founded black churches
in nearly every Virginia town.
Churches served as educational, social, and political centers of the black community, havens from
discrimination, and places to exercise such new rights as marriage and taking a name of one's own
choosing. Churches nurtured the musical tradition known by the 1870s as gospel. In the twentieth
century, they became places to organize civil rights activity. The 1910s and 1920s were especially
bleak. The Ku Klux Klan revived, and Virginia adopted a Racial Integrity Act in 1924 that served
as a model for Adolf Hitler's Nuremberg laws.
Economic Recovery
But if the years after 1885 were a time of political stagnation and social regression, it also was
one of vibrant economic change. The industrial revolution reached Virginia in full force. Although
the commonwealth remained largely agricultural, many Virginians for the first time became employees
of other people in tobacco factories, coal mines, and textile, flour, and lumber mills. Although much
of the profit of these industries went to northerners, Virginians nonetheless actively sought the
economic benefits outside capital could bring.
One of the most important industries was tobacco. Tobacco farming had been important to Virginia
since 1612, but now the manufacture of tobacco products came to the fore as demand soared. By
1880 one-quarter of the workforce of Richmond and Petersburg was employed turning out a million
pounds of smoking tobacco as pipes and cigars became popular. Cigarette use by Americans increased
from 14 million to 200 million between 1870 and 1900 and continued to grow for decades. Only
recently, because of health concerns, has cigarette consumption dropped in the United States.
Railroads Transform the Landscape
Equally important, perhaps more so, was the coming of the railroad. "Railroads and guano [fertilizer]," wrote
Frederick Olmstead in 1866, "seem, just now, to give life and improvement in Virginia." The expansion of
railroads in the late 1800s was critical to economic growth, enlarging the market for Virginia's agricultural
produce, manufactures, and natural resources. Small towns such as Gladstone and Big Stone Gap sprang
up along railroad lines, which also transformed the hamlet Big Lick (population 400 in 1881) from "a pretty
little village of little account" into Roanoke (population 25,000 in 1892).
The development of virgin areas by railroads facilitated use and abuse of natural resources through strip mining,
pollution, and excessive timber cutting. These were largely overlooked because, overall, railroads fueled economic
growth and raised living standards above mere subsistence. Log cabins gave way to frame houses in even the
farthest hollows of the Appalachians. After 1900 more than 90% of new mountain houses were made from
milled lumber.
Roanoke became headquarters of the Norfolk & Western Railway, which connected the
newly discovered coal fields of southwest Virginia to Norfolk and Newport News, which
became two of the world's largest coal ports. The 1873 discovery of vast high-grade coal fields
also transformed southwest Virginia from a hardscrabble, sparsely populated agricultural backwater
into a booming, industrialized section. At that time coal fueled the world's ships, locomotives, homes,
and industries. Railroads could move the coal to the Virginia coast for export throughout the world.
Mining, however, was dangerous work, especially before government set any safety regulations, and
miners would become one of the few occupations in Virginia to be heavily unionized. Those miners who
were locals, however, seldom longed for their former lives scratching a living from rocky soil. But many
of the miners came from other areas, often outside Virginia. Nor were all of them white. In 1880 just two
percent of Wise County residents were black, but because of mining the figure reached ten percent in 1900.
Virginia Traditions
In the late 1800s the coming of the machine age to Virginia coexisted with older, handicraft traditions.
Many still flourished. The economic growth of the New South era led to a golden age for Shenandoah
Valley potteries. Pottery making in the Valley was largely a German tradition begun in the mid-1700s.
It evolved from production of purely utilitarian earthenware food and liquid storage containers in the
1700s to more varied forms and artistic expressions in stoneware by the mid-1800s. Although it
flourished from about 1870 to 1893, the end came quickly. The replacement of pottery in kitchens
by glass jars and canned food ended the 200-year-old tradition by about 1915. The postwar flood
of mass-produced furniture from Cincinnati and Grand Rapids crowded out the village cabinetmaker,
and the gunsmith and ironmonger followed suit. The disappearance of the blacksmith would take
longer, until internal combustion automobiles, trucks, and tractors largely replaced horses and
mules by the 1930s.
One old Virginia tradition persisted in spite of repeated efforts to suppress it -- moonshining -- distilling
liquor without paying excise taxes. Those charged with collecting the taxes and destroying illicit stills were
called revenuers. Prohibition, which made all liquor production illegal, began in Virginia in 1916 and nationwide
in 1919. It made moonshining even more profitable. By 1923 Virginia was the third largest moonshining state.
The Franklin County Conspiracy, in which dozens of revenuers and government officials were shown to have
taken bribes from moonshiners, made national headlines for months in 1935 and earned Franklin County
-- south of Roanoke -- the nickname "the wettest place in the United States."
Changes in Farming and Agriculture
Another continuity with the antebellum era was the predominance of agriculture. Despite the growth of
industry and commerce, 85 percent of Virginians in 1900 still lived in rural areas, mostly on farms. Farmers
suffered from economic downturns in 1873, 1893, and throughout the 1920s and 1930s, until war broke
out in Europe in 1939. Although railroads had expanded the market for Virginia products, farmers were at
the mercy of high railroad freight charges, fluctuating commodity prices, and periodic droughts. Unlike
today, many farmers were black. In the 1930s they produced 30 percent of Virginia's tobacco and corn,
50 percent of its cotton, and 60 percent of its peanuts.
But change came to the farms, too. In 1920 the number of horses and mules on Virginia farms peaked
at 900,000. Thirty years later, steam- or gas-powered tractors had replaced almost all work animals, while
machines such as the peanut picker reduced the need for stoop labor. Life remained hard for both man and
beast, however, until electricity reached rural areas at the end of the 1930s and in the 1940s.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Virginia hard, but not as hard as more industrialized northern states.
The Byrd Organization was philosophically opposed to much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
United States Senator Carter Glass, for example, denounced the National Recovery Administration as an effort
"to transplant Hitlerism to every corner of this nation." Nonetheless, state Democrats were willing to accept
federal money for public works projects -- "pork" in political jargon -- such as the Colonial and Blue Ridge
Parkways, the Skyline Drive, and Shenandoah National Park.
Education
Another aspect of society that changed drastically at this time was education. In colonial Virginia, education had
been a private matter for those who could afford it, not a right for everyone. There were no publicly financed schools.
A few local benefactors endowed private schools that offered elementary education to some white Virginians of few
means, despite complaints by the governing class who feared the social consequences of educating the poor. Teaching
slaves was considered even worse, was seldom done, and was made illegal. The wealthy did, however, favor creating
institutions of higher learning -- the only level of education they could not arrange for their children privately.
The American Revolution raised the importance of education beyond all imagining. Upon education rested not the
nourishment of an established church or elite class, but the success of the republican experiment itself. Consequently,
Thomas Jefferson proposed a comprehensive scheme of statewide free elementary and secondary schools, but it was
defeated because of its cost. Taxation, after all, had ignited the Revolution. The only part implemented was a new state
university to be located at Charlottesville. Other colleges had been founded since the Revolution -- Hampden-Sydney,
Washington College, Randolph-Macon, and Virginia Military Institute -- and by 1840 Virginia was the equal or superior
of most states and many nations in higher education for young men. Below that level, however, the story was
increasingly dismal.
Immediately following the Civil War, formal schools for newly freed black men and women were opened by northern
churches, philanthropic groups, and the federal government's Freedmen's Bureau. Generally, northern teachers--male
and female, white and black--taught in these schools. The Reconstruction Constitutional Convention of 1867-68
mandated a statewide system of free, state-funded schools, for blacks and whites. By 1871 most localities had
operational public school systems in place -- racially segregated to minimize controversy. The focus was primary
education. Virginia had only a handful of true high schools before 1906. Attendance only became compulsory in
1922. The quality of teaching and level of funding were inadequate, and black schools received the least. For
all its flaws, however, the public school system of the late 1800s was a major, if incomplete, step in the commonwealth's
path to modernity.
First Electric Streetcars
A conspicuous symbol of modernity in Virginia's cities was the electric streetcar. In May 1888 Richmond
became the first city in the world to have a fully operational electric streetcar system. Frank J. Sprague of
New York, a former assistant of Thomas A. Edison, was the man who solved the problem of providing electric
railways with large, heavy-duty motors, a reliable controller, and a practical way to get electricity from a central
generating station to a moving car. Sprague designed a twelve-mile system for Richmond that was constructed in
1887-88 under the supervision of A. Langstaff Johnston of Richmond, a Virginia Military Institute graduate. Success
in Richmond revolutionized transport in cities across the globe. Within fifteen years, 20,000 miles of streetcar
tracks were laid in the United States alone.
If streetcars were symbols of the new, progressive Virginia, however, they also became daily reminders of
Virginia's system of racial degradation. A 1906 law required black Virginians to sit at the back of all public
transit vehicles. Segregation caused many problems. Conductors had to decide a person's race at a glance,
sometimes resulting in fights or lawsuits. Visitors to Virginia were puzzled as to where to sit. White workmen
returning from dirty jobs often sat among the blacks rather than beside a white woman. Blacks decided to
boycott the streetcars. These efforts failed but contributed to the emergence of a strategy of resistance more
assertive than that counseled by Virginia-born Booker T. Washington.
An unanticipated but ultimately important effect of the streetcar on race relations was the emergence of suburbs.
For the first time it was possible to work in a city but live outside it. Streetcars inadvertently fostered segregation
by race and economic class.
The Automobile Transforms Virginia
Within fifteen years of their appearance, however, electric streetcars would be doomed by a new means
of transport that completely reshaped the commonwealth, the country, and indeed the whole western world.
It was the automobile. Wood & Meagher built a prototype gasoline-propelled motor carriage in Richmond
in 1896, but no manufacture of vehicles was attempted. One "Dawson Auto-Mobile," a steam-powered
vehicle, was made and sold in Basic City (now Waynesboro) in 1900-1901. Godwin & Wrenn in Norfolk
may have built a prototype car in 1902. Richmond Iron Works produced its first "Virginian" in 1910, began
manufacture in 1911, and closed in 1912, the same year in which the "Kline Kar" relocated from
Pennsylvania to Richmond.
In fact, Kline Kars were assembled rather than actually manufactured in Richmond. The component parts
were made mostly in Midwestern cities. About 2,500 Kline Kars were produced before the company closed
in 1923, one of a thousand makers that succumbed to the mass production techniques of Detroit giants such as
Ford. Another victim was the Piedmont Motor Company of Lynchburg, which between 1917 and 1922 made
the bodies but otherwise assembled four models -- the "Piedmont," "Alsace," "Bush," and "Lone Star"
(which in Texas was falsely touted as a local product). The "Cub" cycle car made in Richmond in 1914, and
the "Cumber" made in Tidewater in 1924, were hobbyist's efforts, not real attempts to manufacture cars.
Although the vast majority of cars in Virginia before 1923, and all of them afterward, were made elsewhere,
the automobile transformed the commonwealth nonetheless.
Autos, however, require good highways, which Virginia did not have. In 1910 the speed limit on
Virginia's country roads was 20 m.p.h. In cities it was 8 m.p.h. Roads were so bad that in 1921 a national
automobile association advised motorists to detour the entire state if possible. Not only were roads poor,
but near Dumfries men blew up a stretch of new road to preserve their lucrative towing business. As late
as 1926, the only long-distance hard-surfaced road was the Staunton-Winchester Turnpike that had
been built before the Civil War.
That year, however, marked a new beginning with the inauguration of Harry F. Byrd, Sr. As a legislator,
he rose to prominence as chairman of the State Senate Roads Committee, and had won passage of a
gasoline tax in 1923. As governor from 1926 to 1930 he orchestrated an unprecedented spurt of
road-building. One of his first important measures was paving Route 1 in 1927. From having a mere
4,000 miles of paved roads in 1918, Virginia had 47,000 miles by 1940 (and 65,000 today). The
improved highway network integrated Virginia's economy more thoroughly than the railroads had
done. It vastly expanded intrastate and interstate trade, fostered the suburbanization the streetcars
had begun, made possible a greatly enlarged tourism industry, and empowered ordinary Virginians.
They were free of the constraints of train, streetcar, and bus schedules. One woman claimed that
it was not the vote that had made her independent but her car.
Revolutions in Technology and Communications
Other technologies also were revolutionizing women's lives. New appliances that reduced housework
enabled some women to work outside the home in factories and mills. Some found work as typists and
telegraph operators, occupations created by the new technologies themselves. Technology also
reduced the need for domestic servants. Many -- though not all of these inventions -- were electrically
powered. Electric lighting came first. The most important labor-saving devices -- electric washing
machines, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators -- came in the 1920s, although mechanical carpet
sweepers, various kitchen gadgets, glass jars, canned food, and public laundries existed earlier. Virginia's
urban homes and offices had begun to be electrified after 1900, but few farms had electricity until the
end of the 1930s. City living became increasingly attractive. No group made the transformation from
rural to urban dwellers more completely than African Virginians. Some went to Virginia's cities, but many
left the state entirely for New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit. As a result,
Virginia's black population percentage dropped to a level last seen in 1700. No longer would racial
problems be Virginia's or the South's alone.
During these same years, from 1865 to 1940, there was a communications revolution that caused the
United States to become a single mass market. The telephone was invented in 1876 and service began
in Richmond in 1879 and in Norfolk in 1881. The phonograph debuted in 1878 and motion pictures in
1895. In the 1890s the halftone printing process made it possible to reproduce photographs in magazines.
Radio became widely available in the 1920s. These innovations lessened rural isolation and broke down
state and regional distinctions. The industries they spawned operated nationally. Increasingly, people of
all states bought the same phonograph records, watched the same films, heard network radio programs,
read the same mass-produced magazines and syndicated comic strips, and were seduced by the
same national advertisers.
Next chapter: Becoming Americans Again
Previous chapter: Becoming Confederates
Home: Chapter menu
Teacher's Guide | Resource Bank | Credits | Comments | VHS Home | Online Exhibitions | Search
Image rights owned by the Virginia Historical Society. Do not use without permission. Rights and reproductions
|
