South, the: Reconstruction to World War II

The period of Reconstruction following the war set the South's political and social attitude for years to come. During this difficult time radical Republicans, African Americans, and so-called carpetbaggers and scalawags ruled the South with the support of federal troops. White Southerners, objecting to this rule, resorted to terrorism and violence and, with the aid of such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, drove the Reconstruction governments from power. The breakdown of the plantation system during the Civil War gave rise to sharecropping, the tenant-farming system of agriculture that still exists in areas of the South. The last half of the 19th cent. saw the beginning of industrialization in the South, with the introduction of textile mills and various industries.

The troubled economic and political life of the region in the years between 1880 and World War II was marked by the rise of the Farmers' Alliance, Populism, and Jim Crow laws and by the careers of such Southerners as Tom Watson, Theodore Bilbo, Benjamin Tillman, and Huey Long. During the 1930s and 40s, thousands of blacks migrated from the South to Northern industrial cities.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• The Contemporary South
• Reconstruction to World War II
• Seventeenth Century to the Civil War
• Geography, Economy, and Other Features
• Bibliography

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