History
479B
Devine
Fall
2012
Study
Questions for Jay R. Mandle, Not Slave,
Not Free, pp. 1-67
Introduction
- How did the
relatively slow economic development in the South after 1865 contribute to
black poverty? Conversely, how did black
poverty help account for the relatively slow economic development? How did the two interact? How are they related?
- How did limiting economic opportunities
for blacks in the South in turn retard southern economic development more
broadly?
- How might
attempts to expand economic opportunities for African Americans enhance
the economic growth rate of the nation as a whole?
Chapter
1
- Why was slave
labor profitable for nineteenth-century southern planters?
- What effects did
the reliance on slave labor have on economic developments in the South?
- Why does the
author believe that implementing a policy of land redistribution (taking
land from the planters and giving it to the freedman) would have produced
a significantly different economic reality in the South after the Civil
War? Despite the Radical
Republicans’ desire to “punish” the southern planters, why was such a
policy never implemented?
- What was the
intended purpose of the Southern Homestead Act? Why did it fail in achieving its
purpose?
- Why was the rate
of black land ownership so low in the postbellum South? How did the
inability to purchase and cultivate one’s own land contribute to black
poverty?
- Why did a system
of plantation tenantry emerge in the South after the Civil War?
- Some historians
have maintained that both planters and African American tenants preferred the sharecropping
system. What evidence does Mandle
introduce to counter this argument?
How did the lack of access to credit limit the planters’ and
tenants’ options?
- Why did the
failure of a black farmer-owner class to emerge in the South insure that
Booker T. Washington’s “self help” strategy would not succeed? What other major consequences occurred
due to the lack of a black farmer-owner class and the persistence of a
white-dominated plantation economy?
- According to
Mandle, even if blacks acquired the skills necessary to succeed as
commercial farmers, they were still likely to remain poor. Why?
Chapter
2
- Why does the
author argue that the existence of a market for black agricultural labor
in the South does not necessarily mean that black labor was “free”?
- What factors
kept black labor in the South from being “free”? Why was it hard for blacks to escape
plantation labor? Why didn’t they
find work doing other things?
- Mandle notes
that there are three arguments for why blacks did not move north in order
to escape the plantation system.
What are those arguments and why does he find one to be more
persuasive than the other two?
- Why could one
argue that black labor was far less “free” than immigrant labor?
Chapter
3
- Why does the
author believe that the way Census Bureau data was reported obscures the
persistence of the system of southern plantation agriculture?
- What were the
differences between the plantation and non-plantation areas of the South?
Why was it more difficult for blacks to achieve an independent status in
those areas of the South dominated by plantations than elsewhere in the
region?
- What negative
effects did strict planter supervision have on blacks’ chances to advance
economically?
- How did the
plantation credit system impede blacks’ economic progress?
- Why did it
matter that in tenant-landlord relations, the landlord kept all the
records?
- Mandle concludes
this chapter by saying that “black southern poverty was structural.” What does it mean to say poverty is
“structural” as opposed to being, say, “cultural”?
Chapter
4
- If one is trying
to measure economic development in the South (or lack of economic development),
why is it useful to examine data from plantation and non-plantation
regions separately? What do we
learn when we examine the data separately?
- How did advances
in labor productivity in cotton compare with advances in wheat and
corn? What role did mechanization
play in labor productivity?
- What
explanations have historians offered that might account for the slow rate
of mechanization in cotton production?
According to the author, why are some explanations more compelling
than others?
- Why were there
relatively few attempts to solve the technical problems associated with
producing cotton?
- One scholar has
maintained that the higher the demand for a product, the higher the demand
for technological advances that would help produce the product more efficiently
(see p. 52). According to Mandle,
did this formula apply to cotton production?
- With regard to
improving productivity by experimenting with new technological
innovations, how did southern plantation agriculture differ from the
family farm system of the North?
Why did northern family farmers actively embrace new labor-saving
technologies while southern planters largely ignored them?
- According to
Mandle, how did lack of education and lack of capital contribute to the
slow pace of productivity growth in the South?
Chapter 5
- How did
exclusion from the political process affect African Americans’ chances of
escaping poverty?
- The historian
Ulrich Phillips argued that the plantation system “was less dependent upon
slavery than slavery was dependent upon it.” What did he mean by this?
- Why is a
“plantation” more than just a large farm that produces output for a
market? What characteristics does
it have that differentiate it from other means of production?
- How do the concepts
of “cultural hegemony” and “paternalism” shed light on how a plantation
system works?
- How did whites
sustain the system of “paternalism” in the South even after emancipation?
What role did violence play? Why were many African Americans willing to
adhere to the “racial etiquette” associated with paternalism even though
the system was based on the assumption of white supremacy?
- Why does Mandle
believe that it is more useful to characterize the postbellum South as
operating under a “plantation” mode of production rather than a
“capitalist” mode of production?
Broader
questions to consider…
- Why is the
notion of a “plantation economy” central to Mandle’s
argument?
- How are southern
economic structures and southern racism related?
- Why was the
South “economically backward” in the years from 1865 through 1920?
- To what extent
was the economic experience of African Americans different from that of
non-blacks between 1865 and 1920?
- How does Mandle’s exploration of African-Americans’ economic
experiences in the South between 1865 and 1920 shed light on the causes of
disproportionate black poverty since 1920?