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Historian Janette Greenwood and her students investigate the lives of black and white Americans in both the North and the South during Reconstruction. |
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Promise and disappointment: black and white Americans after Emancipation
Professor Janette Greenwood's research
Was life better for the South's "better classes" of blacks after the Civil War? Historian Janette Greenwood tried to answer that question
in her book Bittersweet Legacy -- an in-depth look into post-war Charlotte, North Carolina and its alliance between privileged blacks and whites. Unfortunately, Greenwood finds that even in this progressive city, being black still meant being left behind.
“The
story of Charlotte’s better classes... is the story of unlimited
promise reduced to bitter disappointment.. at the same time it is the
story of men and women who ... for a short time embodied an
alternative vision of race relations.” from Bittersweet
Legacy
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The former slave
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The
setting
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The vision
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The
disappointment
The former slave
Warren Coleman was a member of the black "better class" near Charlotte,
N. C. in the years after the Civil War.
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he was
born a slave
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after
emancipation he became a trader and pedlar
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he built
up successful grocery and confectionary business
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he
attended college
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he
invested in real estate and became a wealthy man
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he attempted to
raise capital, mostly from other blacks, to start a cotton mill to be owned
and operated by blacks
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the promised
capital failed to materialize to the extent needed, and the mill was sold to
white industrialists
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he died unable
to fulfill his dream of becoming a participant in the state's highly
profitable textile industry
The trajectory of
Coleman's life illustrates the promise and disappointment of some blacks during that
period--blacks who were able to progress educationally and professionally, but
were unable to take their places at the highest levels of economic and political
power.
The setting
The period after the American Civil War
was one of
tremendous social turmoil for Yankees and Rebels, former slaves and former
plantation owners, whites and newly-freed blacks. African-Americans like Warren Coleman
fervently hoped that American society would be "reconstructed"
in terms that
would guarantee for them the same opportunities for life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness as for their white neighbors.
For a while it seemed like the town of Charlotte, N. C.
might provide that environment of opportunity. In her book Bittersweet Legacy,
Professor Janette Greenwood uses Charlotte as a case study to examine the hopes
and disappointments vested in improving black-white relations from 1850-1910.
Post-war Charlotte was a New South city in the throes of political and social
change, with an expectation of rapid economic growth and flexibility, that, with
luck, would extend across class, race and gender.
The vision
Greenwood examines specifically the "better classes," a term used at
the time by both black and white professionals--doctors, lawyers, business
people, teachers and ministers--to describe themselves. Charlotte's "better
classes" considered themselves different from the mainstream population,
whether of whites or blacks, and placed a high value on education, hard work,
and ambition. They were for a brief time able to form an alliance based on class
that cut across racial lines. They cooperated in the building of black churches
and hospitals, and in a fierce (but unsuccessful) campaign to enact prohibition. Whites at times
attended black social events. This alliance challenged the norms of race
relations, and for a brief time created an alternative vision of how blacks and
whites might coexist. The black better class worked hard to prove itself worthy
of equal treatment with whites, and, by setting an example, to counteract the
stereotype of African-Americans as lazy and ignorant.
The disappointment
Unfortunately, that alliance, like Coleman's business career, only progressed so
far. The development of an "elite" class of whites who derived their
wealth from industrial investment had no parallel in black society. The new
white elite was much less interested in social reform: that concern was left to
less influential white professionals and small business owners. While
black men
were able to vote, they were unable to establish a permanent foothold in the
political machine. The Republican Party--the party of Lincoln, the party that
championed the freed slave-finally decided that support of the black man was no
longer in its best interest. White supremacists gained ascendancy in the
Democratic party, using Herbert Spencer's theory of the survival of the fittest
to bolster their position that African-Americans were racially inferior. The
backlash to black advancement had taken hold and would not be seriously
challenged for another 50 years.
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Additional Resources
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Charlotte's black physicians, ca. 1895. Standing, left
to right, A. A. Wyche, N. B. Houser; sitting, left to right, J.
T. Williams, W. H. Graves. Image courtesy of the
Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg
County. Used by permission.
Black businesspeople, Queen City Drug Store, ca. 1900.
Courtesy of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks
Commission. Used by permission.
Biddle University (now Johnson C. Smith University). Class of 1894.
Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Public Library of
Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Used by permission.
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