Alabama (state)

D

6

Bourbon Rule and Agrarian Unrest

The Democrats, called Bourbons, who took over in 1874 inherited a large state debt, much of it fraudulent, that the Reconstruction government had incurred to finance expansion of railroads, industry, and public education. To cut back on the debt, they adopted a program of low taxes and limited spending. Education was underfunded, and school terms were little more than three months in rural areas. Black men continued to cast election ballots (no women of any race were allowed to vote) although the black vote was usually manipulated by whites through intimidation or economic pressure.

With slavery abolished, blacks and whites had to adjust to wage labor. Most blacks and many poor whites had no land of their own. They had to work for large landowners, who had little cash to pay them. Under these conditions, a system of sharecropping and tenant farming evolved. A sharecropper raised part of the landlord’s crop and was paid a share of the profit after deductions for living expenses and the cost of tools and supplies. A tenant farmer sold what he raised and paid rent to the landlord out of the profit. If the profit was low, the landlord got his share first. The sharecropper or tenant took what was left or, if none was left, got an advance to keep going for another year.

The lenders who advanced credit usually demanded that the debtor farmers plant cotton, the South’s most dependable cash crop. Unfortunately, the price of cotton fell soon after the Civil War and stayed down for decades. Thus the tenant farmers and sharecroppers fell into an endless cycle of debt. Cotton became even more dominant, and Alabama’s agriculture and economic activity failed to diversify. Laws were passed limiting the freedom of sharecroppers and tenant farmers and restricting their economic opportunities. For instance, they forfeited any share in crops they abandoned, and their personal property could be seized by the landlord for unpaid debts. Not until World War II (1939-1945), when widespread mechanization of cotton production made sharecropping and tenant farming unprofitable for the landlords, did the system begin to disappear.

The agricultural slump was not limited to cotton. As elsewhere in the nation, small farmers suffered as wealth created by commerce and manufacturing was concentrated in the hands of a few business leaders. Among the causes of unrest were the declining prices of farm products, the growing indebtedness of farmers to merchants and banks, and the discriminatory freight rates imposed on farmers by the railroads. In the 1870s and 1880s American farmers under midwestern leadership formed self-help groups such as the Grange and Farmers’ Alliance. When these organizations decided that agricultural grievances had to be addressed with political action, the dominance of the Bourbons in Alabama was threatened. This threat was complicated by the fact that the Bourbons stood for white power, while the farmers’ groups were willing to attract black farmers to their cause. The movement nationwide was called populism. Alabama populists tried first to gain control of the Democratic Party, and, when that failed, formed a splinter group, the Jeffersonian Democrats.

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The coalition of black and white farmers fell apart after 1896 as a result of intimidation and white susceptibility to racist Democratic appeals. Segregation of the races, through separate public facilities for whites and blacks, became a basic rule in Southern society in the last two decades of the 19th century. A black educator, Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, reacted to this erosion of black rights by advocating a policy of racial accommodation. He urged blacks not to emphasize the goals of social integration and political rights but instead to acquire the occupational skills that would lead to economic advancement. Other black leaders disagreed, but Washington’s prestige and white support of his position caused him to be accepted as the blacks’ chief spokesperson.

E

The 20th Century

E

1

New Industry

By 1900 iron and steel were the most important industries in the state. United States Steel Corporation moved into the Birmingham district in 1907, indicating its national significance. Lumbering and turpentine production also became important. Industrial growth was due in large part to the building of railroads. The value of the state’s few rail lines had come to be fully appreciated in the Civil War, when starvation was widespread because food produced in the Black Belt could not be transported into the hill country and other areas not served by navigable rivers. After the war, the Reconstruction government was determined to construct railroads, especially through the mineral district. The South also had come to appreciate an industrial economy. The coal, iron ore, and limestone deposits in Jefferson County, which had long been known but ignored, were now exploited. As railroads opened up the hill country, new towns based on industry—Birmingham, Anniston, Gadsden, and Fort Payne—grew into cities.

During World War I (1914-1918) industrial and agricultural production in Alabama expanded to meet wartime needs. Mobile for a while became an important shipbuilding city despite the shallowness of Mobile Bay. The federal government spent millions of dollars clearing and keeping open the 58-km (36.5-mi) ship channel from Mobile to the Gulf of Mexico.

E

2

Diversification

Economic expansion continued through the 1920s but was temporarily halted by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Alabama’s delegation in Congress, which had much seniority and legislative experience, provided leadership for the economic recovery programs of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945). These federal programs helped ease poverty in Alabama and diversify the state’s economy. One of the most important was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which provided agricultural research (especially in improvement of fertilizers), reforestation, flood control, dam building, and hydroelectric power.

South Alabama’s mild climate and flat, gently rolling countryside made it attractive for military bases and airfields. Military expenditures during World War II stimulated economic expansion and provided civilian jobs. Mobile again became an important shipbuilding center, and the Birmingham steel plants geared up for war production.

Alabama’s economic base continued to diversify after World War II. Beginning in the 1950s, the U.S. spaceflight program at Redstone Arsenal and George C. Marshall Space Flight Center made Huntsville a leading aerospace center. Birmingham’s economy, which had depended heavily on the iron and steel industries and blue-collar labor, saw growth in medical services, insurance, manufacturing, and engineering. Labor unions became less important, but not before wages increased. Alabama farmers turned to cattle, timber, soybeans, peanuts, and chickens, while cotton production fell. Through the 1970s, the rural population and the number of farms decreased as people moved to urban areas. The remaining farms were mostly large agribusinesses.

E

3

Political Developments, 1900 to 1972

Populism, with its potential to combine poor-white and black interests, threatened Bourbon control of Southern state governments. The Bourbons’ response was to disfranchise blacks—that is, prevent them from voting. Mississippi was the first state to disfranchise black voters. Alabama achieved it through its 1901 constitution, using methods like a property ownership requirement, a literacy test, and a poll tax (a tax levied on individuals as a prerequisite for voting). In one-party Alabama, the Democratic nomination was equivalent to election, so early in the 20th century, nominating conventions were replaced by direct primary elections. This gave the people greater power in selecting candidates.

In the years preceding World War I, several reforms and new laws were enacted. Governor Braxton Bragg Comer (1907-1911) achieved regulation of child labor in factories, better funding of education, and stronger regulation of railroads. After World War I, a state budgetary system was introduced, and the tax structure was revised to provide more revenue. State highway construction was expanded as automobile traffic increased.

Bibb Graves was elected governor in 1927 with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, which was then politically powerful in Alabama. Graves brought many progressive reforms, including abolition of the corrupt and inhumane convict lease system. This system amounted to slavery: convicts were put to work in chain gangs for private entrepreneurs who had contracted with the state for their labor in fields, mines, or road repair. They were never paid for their labor, thus leaving large profits for the business owners and the state. Graves also improved mental hospitals and provided capital improvement funds for schools and colleges. The onset of the Great Depression forced Graves to deal with relief for Alabama citizens who were suffering from the hard times. He campaigned on promises to provide jobs in state government when he ran for governor again in 1935 (at that time the constitution did not allow governors to succeed themselves). In his second term, New Deal programs such as the TVA helped ease the Depression in Alabama.

In 1939, after Governor Frank M. Dixon took office, a state civil service was established to provide a fair, rational basis for filling state government jobs. This was a reaction to Graves’s use of state jobs as a campaign ploy and his granting of jobs for political purposes. Later Dixon reorganized the state government and streamlined its cumbersome system of expenditure.

James E. (“Big Jim”) Folsom, who was governor from 1947 to 1951 and from 1955 to 1959, was very popular and was noted for his colorful campaigning style. He campaigned in small towns and crossroads hamlets from a wagon filled with hay, and his speeches were preceded by music from his “Strawberry Pickers” country music band. As he talked, he swirled a mop in a bucket of suds, saying he would use the mop to clean up state government. Folsom was more liberal on racial questions than other Alabama politicians of his time. He opposed oppressive segregation policies and refused to tolerate terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan.

One of Folsom’s supporters was a Barber County state legislator, George C. Wallace, who tried to succeed him in 1959. Race was a main issue in the campaign, and Wallace’s opponent, John Patterson, used it to win votes (most blacks were still unable to vote). Wallace, following Folsom’s example, did not use race as an issue, and it cost him the election. In 1962, however, Wallace ran on a platform of support for segregation and made race the cornerstone of his campaign. This time he won easily. In 1966 he supported the election of his wife, Lurleen, to carry on his policies until he was eligible for another term. Two years into office, however, she died of cancer.

In 1968 Wallace ran for president of the United States as the candidate of the American Independent Party. Campaigning on a platform of states’ rights and “law and order,” he carried Alabama and four other Southern states. In 1970 Wallace was again elected as governor, and in 1972 he campaigned for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. During a speech in Laurel, Maryland, he was shot and partially paralyzed by a would-be assassin. In 1974 he became governor again after the law was changed to let him succeed himself. He thus became the first Alabama governor to serve three terms.

E

4

Civil Rights

After Reconstruction, Alabama maintained separate schools and other public facilities for whites and blacks. During the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activities in the state focused on integration of these facilities and equal political rights for blacks. The federal government encouraged these efforts, but most white Alabamians supported the state’s segregation policies and state officials continued to enforce them. The intransigence of Alabama officials encouraged civil rights groups to challenge state authority, and Alabama witnessed a number of major events of the period.

In 1955 a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white passenger as the law of segregation required. She was arrested and, as a result, blacks boycotted buses in Montgomery in 1955 and 1956. Civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., led the successful boycott; his efforts brought the technique of passive resistance to national prominence. The boycott ended in 1956 with a mandate from the Supreme Court of the United States outlawing all segregated public transportation in the city.

The Montgomery boycott was a clear victory for passive resistance, and King emerged as a highly respected leader. Mindful of this, black clergymen from across the South organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), with King as its president. The organization was devoted to King’s principle, adopted from the nationalist movement in India, that no violence was to be done to opponents of civil rights, even in retaliation or self-defense. In 1963 King led a massive civil rights campaign in Birmingham and organized drives for black voter registration, desegregation, and better education and housing throughout the South. He was arrested during demonstrations in Birmingham and put in solitary confinement for nine days, during which he wrote one of his most famous essays, “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The next month, Birmingham City Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor ordered fire hoses and police dogs used against civil rights demonstrators, many of them children. A few months later, Ku Klux Klan members planted dynamite in a black Birmingham church, the 16th Street Baptist Church. The explosion killed four young girls. Desegregation of restaurants, one of the goals of the Birmingham demonstrations, was accomplished by the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations.

In 1965 King led the Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery to protest restrictions on black voters. This demonstration furthered the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Widespread registration of black voters under that act led to the election of blacks to a number of local offices and their appointment to many boards and commissions. In 1979 Richard Arrington was elected the first black mayor of Birmingham.

Integrated schooling came late to Alabama. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that mandatory segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, Governor George Wallace tried twice in 1963 to prevent integration, first in June at the University of Alabama and then in September at several elementary and secondary schools. Both times, President John F. Kennedy activated the National Guard to facilitate integration. Following the admission of two blacks to the University of Alabama and another to Florence State College in 1963, there was a rapid increase in the number of black students attending formerly all-white Alabama colleges and universities. The increase accelerated after Auburn University and the University of Alabama began recruiting black athletes, first for football and then for basketball scholarships. In 1969 less than 15 percent of the state’s black students attended integrated schools. However, by 1970 this had surged to 80 percent.

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