History 371

Devine

Spring 2014

Study Questions for Jay R. Mandle, Not Slave, Not Free, pp. 1- 67

Introduction

1. 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 South’s relatively slow economic development?

2. How did limiting economic opportunities for blacks in the South in turn retard southern economic development more broadly?

3. How might attempts to expand economic opportunities for African Americans enhance the economic growth rate of the nation as a whole?

Chapter 1

1. Why was slave labor profitable for nineteenth-century southern planters?

2. What effects did the reliance on slave labor have on economic developments in the South?

3. 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?

4. What was the intended purpose of the Southern Homestead Act? Why did it fail in achieving its purpose?

5. 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?

6. Why did a system of plantation tenantry emerge in the South after the Civil War?

7. 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?

8. 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?

9. 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

1. 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”?

2. 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?

3. 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?

4. Why could one argue that black labor was far less “free” than immigrant labor?

Chapter 3

1. Why does the author believe that the way Census Bureau data was reported obscures the persistence of the system of southern plantation agriculture?

2. 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?

3. What negative effects did strict planter supervision have on blacks’ chances to advance economically?

4. How did the plantation credit system impede blacks’ economic progress?

5. Why did it matter that in tenant-landlord relations, the landlord kept all the records?

6. 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

1. 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?

2. How did advances in labor productivity in cotton compare with advances in wheat and corn? What role did mechanization play in labor productivity?

3. 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?

4. Why were there relatively few attempts to solve the technical problems associated with producing cotton?

5. 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?

6. 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?

7. 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

1. How did exclusion from the political process affect African Americans’ chances of escaping poverty?

2. 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?

3. 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?

4. How do the concepts of “cultural hegemony” and “paternalism” shed light on how a plantation system works?

5. 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?

6. 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…

1. Why does Mandle think that understanding what a “plantation economy” was is important if we are to understand why the South (and blacks in the South) remained poor?

2. How did the structure of the southern economy reinforce southern racism?

3. Why was the South “economically backward” in the years from 1865 through 1920?

4. To what extent was the economic experience of African Americans different from that of non-blacks between 1865 and 1920?

5. 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?