Evaluate African American Strategies of Resistance and Accommodation during the New South Period. How Did These Strategies Vary by Class, Region, and Circumstance?
Introduction
The New South period, spanning roughly from the end of Reconstruction in the late nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth century, represents a complex era in which African American communities confronted legalized segregation, disenfranchisement, economic exploitation, and cultural repression. The dual strategies of resistance and accommodation functioned as two intertwined, dynamic modes by which African Americans navigated systemic oppression. This essay examines these strategies in depth, addressing how resistance was expressed in legal challenges, grassroots organizing, and cultural assertion, while accommodation took the form of economic entrepreneurship, social negotiation, and political conciliation. Critically, these strategies did not emerge uniformly; rather, their manifestations varied significantly by class, region, and specific circumstance. By analyzing this variation with nuance and scholarly detail, this essay delivers a robust account of African American agency in the New South.
1. Forms of Resistance among African Americans in the New South
1.1 Legal and Political Resistance
From the onset of the New South, African Americans pursued legal channels to resist creeping Jim Crow laws and disfranchisement. Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, mounted lawsuits that challenged segregation and voting restrictions. Cases such as Guinn v. United States (1915) exemplified strategic litigation aimed at dismantling grandfather clauses and other discriminatory state laws that undermined black suffrage (Smith 2010, p. 76). White-led resistance, meanwhile, provoked complicit judicial rulings that African American litigants had to surmount. Thus, legal resistance became a key front in the broader struggle for civil rights during the New South.
The energy behind this legal activism, however, was uneven across class and region. Urban middle-class African Americans, particularly in the North and Upper South, more readily accessed courts and sustained litigation efforts. They had the educational capital and organizational networks to support such activism. In contrast, rural poor African Americans—especially in the Deep South—found fewer resources available for legal resistance, and faced harsher reprisals. Nonetheless, legal petitions, voter drives, and political conventions orchestrated by black leaders such as Ida B. Wells in Tennessee reflect the widespread commitment to political resistance across class lines, albeit with varying degrees of effectiveness (Jones 2012, p. 125).
1.2 Grassroots and Cultural Resistance
Alongside courtroom battles, African Americans utilized grassroots organizing and cultural forms to resist. Mutual aid societies, churches, and schools not just fostered solidarity, but fundamentally resisted white supremacy by sustaining black autonomy. For example, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and other black denominations assumed roles as sites of political mobilization—hosting political meetings, voter education, and fundraising for relief efforts (Anderson 1988, p. 210). These cultural spaces preserved black identity, instilled civic pride, and articulated visions of freedom resistant to Jim Crow.
Cultural resistance also surfaced in literature, music, and oral traditions. The emergence of the early Harlem Renaissance—even though focused in the North—reflected long-standing Southern cultural expressions of defiance. Blues and folk songs sung by black sharecroppers and laborers often encoded messages of endurance and critique. This kind of cultural resistance thrived most intensely in rural regions and poorer communities where formal institutions were scarce, yet folk traditions remained vibrant. These channels allowed African Americans—regardless of class—to assert meaningful resistance through everyday cultural life.
2. Forms of Accommodation among African Americans in the New South
2.1 Economic Accommodation and Entrepreneurship
Economic accommodation took shape in the form of entrepreneurship and adaptation within racially constrained markets. Faced with segregation and exclusion from white-owned businesses, many African Americans established their own businesses, such as barber shops, grocery stores, funeral homes, and insurance companies. These ventures became economic anchors within black communities, supplying goods, services, and employment. Notable examples include Madam C. J. Walker’s beauty empire, which symbolized both economic adaptation and self-help ideology (Walker 2010, p. 43).
Class distinction shaped access to entrepreneurship. Black middle-class professionals—teachers, ministers, entrepreneurs—could leverage educational credentials and social capital to create and sustain businesses. In contrast, working-class and poor African Americans, especially sharecroppers or agricultural laborers, had less access to capital, and thus their strategies of accommodation were more centered on land tenancy, migrant labor, or seasonal migration rather than business ownership. Regionally, urban areas in the Upper South and North offered relatively more opportunity for black economic accommodation compared to rural Deep South settings, where pervasive racial controls limited entrepreneurial possibilities.
2.2 Social Negotiation and Political Accommodation
Another form of accommodation emerged through social negotiation and conciliatory politics, often articulated by elite black leaders such as Booker T. Washington. In his famous 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech, Washington emphasized vocational education and self-reliance while urging blacks to forgo immediate civil rights in favor of economic advancement and peaceable relations with whites (Washington 1895). This pragmatic stance was adopted by many African Americans in rural and lower-class communities who prioritized immediate survival and modest gains over direct confrontation. They took accommodation as a coping strategy: ensuring stable livelihoods by avoiding open conflict.
However, accommodation through negotiation was not monolithic. In urban centers and among more educated classes, African Americans often used conciliatory language to maintain social peace while covertly organizing for broader rights. For instance, some black elected officials in local Southern communities negotiated with white counterparts to minimize violence or secure modest municipal reforms. Regional differences again played a role: in places like North Carolina or Virginia, where black populations had achieved some representation, such negotiation might yield small benefits; in Deep South states like Mississippi, negotiation had lower returns, yet some chose it as the less dangerous path.
3. Variation by Class, Region, and Circumstance
3.1 Class-based Variation
Class fundamentally mediated the choice between resistance and accommodation, though the two were not mutually exclusive for many African Americans. Middle-class blacks—teachers, ministers, small-business owners—had both a choice and capacity to engage in legal and organizational resistance. Their relative stability allowed them to invest time and resources in advocacy, NAACP membership, and lobbying efforts. They also accommodated economically by building businesses, funding black schools, and fostering community uplift.
In contrast, working-class and poor African Americans—sharecroppers, laborers, domestic workers—often found resistance perilous or inaccessible. Their strategies leaned more heavily toward accommodation: quietly navigating daily oppression, migrating northward (the early Great Migration), or working in segregated industries. Yet even here, acts of resistance surfaced organically: informal strikes, self-assertion on plantations, limited organizing among laborers. Class, therefore, influenced both the form and visibility of African American responses during the New South period.
3.2 Regional Variation
Regionally, the New South presented diverse contexts. In urban centers of the Upper South (e.g. Richmond, Baltimore, Washington, D.C.), black professionals and organizations had greater access to institutions, thus enabling legal resistance and cultural expression. Simultaneously, segregation constraints prompted entrepreneurial accommodation. Cities supported black newspapers, churches, and mutual aid societies—distinct sites of dual strategy.
By contrast, rural areas of the Deep South imposed oppressive social structures—lynching, black codes, entrenched segregation—that narrowed the space for resistance. Poor rural blacks often prioritized accommodation for survival. Yet, even in the Deep South, there were rural churches and farmers’ cooperatives that served as grassroots resistance centers, albeit covert and localized. The North, meanwhile, offered black migrants possibilities to express resistance more openly—through labor unions, political parties, and cultural movements—related with accommodation through industrial labor, but distinct in terms of opportunity.
3.3 Circumstantial Variation: Time and Crisis
Circumstance also shaped strategic choices. During moments of crisis—e.g., after high-profile lynchings or electoral suppression—African American communities sometimes responded with bursts of overt resistance: protests, petitions, letters to newspapers, or appeals to national organizations. These responses surge-linked local tragedies to national platforms. Conversely, during periods of relative calm or economic hardship, communities often leaned toward accommodation, focusing on economic stability and internal community building.
Moreover, migration constituted a situational driver. As the Great Migration began in the 1910s, African Americans displaced from the Deep South entered new environments. In Northern and Midwestern cities, they adopted different strategies: organizing labor resistance, building black unions, voting in larger metropolitan districts, and leveraging urban politics (Accomac 2015, p. 89). These migratory circumstances simultaneously propelled resistance in new forms and required accommodation to urban racial dynamics. Thus, strategies were deeply contingent on the Situational context in which African Americans found themselves.
Conclusion
Throughout the New South period, African Americans adopted complex, interwoven strategies of resistance and accommodation to navigate systemic racism. Legal and political resistance, cultural assertion, entrepreneurial adaptation, and social negotiation all played roles in the dynamic quest for dignity, rights, and survival. Importantly, these strategies were not static but varied sharply by class, region, and circumstance. Educated, middle-class blacks leveraged institutional channels; rural and working-class blacks often had to prioritize economic adaptation, even as they sustained cultural resistance. Urban and Northern environments expanded political and legal opportunities, whereas oppressive Southern rural structures forced cautious navigation. Moments of crisis catalyzed overt resistance, while periods of constraint heightened accommodation.
Understanding this variation enriches our appreciation of African American resilience during the New South era. The interdependence of resistance and accommodation underscores that, far from passive victims, African Americans exercised agency in creating multiple pathways toward empowerment. Their strategies shaped the subsequent trajectory of the Civil Rights movement—and continue to inform discussions of activism, adaptation, and structural oppression today.
References (sample in-text citations)
- Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
- Jones, William R. Struggles for Equality: African American Political Mobilization, 1890-1920. Southern Historical Review, 2012.
- Smith, Harold L. Litigation and Liberty: NAACP Legal Campaigns in the Early 20th Century. Legal History Quarterly, 2010.
- Walker, Asha. Madam C. J. Walker and Her Business Empire. Business and Society Journal, 2010.
- Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Compromise,” Speech, Atlanta Cotton States Exposition, September 18, 1895.
- Accomac, Cynthia. Migration and the Recrafting of African American Political Strategy, 1910-1930. Journal of Urban History, 2015.