The common theme shared by Ayers and Ownby is the power and influence of the general stores and the railroads on the lives of all Southerners. According to both writers, the general store dictated: 1) what you might see of the world through the products offered, and 2) whether or not you can afford to save to buy and depending on how much you owe the store. The absence of a railroad station often determined if a town or village would be developed. I was surprised at just how much influence the railroad industry had, including the creation of the four U.S. time zones.
Ayers suggests the factors which changed the South after Reconstruction were: 1) the rapid spread of the railroads, 2) proliferation and influence of general stores, 3) migration of black and white southerners within and out of the south, and 4) the rise and fall of certain industries, including cotton, textile factories, lumber/sawmills and coal mining.
There were several things which grabbed my attention:
- The amount of blacks who did become landowners and where those land-owning opportunities came about; Upper South, coastal regions where cotton crops were lowest and where the population was predominately white (Ayers, 35).
- Also interesting that the black landowners had to be careful how they displayed any success. Their success and
ambition were often looked upon with displeasure by whites. Blacks in the South
during this area definitely were caught in a Catch 22 dilemma. - The quote about the separation of classes among blacks and the importance of this development as a positive sign (Ayers, 13) for any group in a society. “’The
best sign for the Negroes of our land,’ a sympathetic white woman observed, ‘is
that they are fast separating into classes, a fact to which their white
fellow-citizens often fail to attach the importance it deserves.’ Black
Southerners increasingly differed among themselves in quite self-conscious
ways. ‘Few modern groups sow a greater internal differentiation of social
conditions than the Negro American, and the failure to realize this is the
cause of much confusion,’ W.E.B DuBois pointed out.” Why would this be true? - In the same vein, I found interesting what I call the “nouveau free” attitude of some blacks, as Ayers pointed out. The old guard black gentility of New Orleans and Charleston (antebellum free blacks and mulattoes) barely accepting the growing upper class of black businessmen in places like Durham. Again, this speaks to classcism, but on a different level than mentioned in the bullet above.
- Cotton became such a crippling crop. I guess this surprises me because I’ve always thought of it as such a stable cash crop of great value. I grew up in a county which prized cotton and still grows cotton. We have a Cotton Festival each
September. - I was surprised at the number of black coal miners, or indeed any black coal
miners at all. (Ayers, 63) - I was surprised to see that some blacks moved from the Upper South to the Deep
South, but being informed, now, about the influences of available jobs and
land, I understand. (Ayers, 17) - I never imagined general stores and town would be these rowdy and nasty places.
