South Carolina: The Decline of Agriculture and the Rise of Jim Crowism

The wartime destruction and the abolition of slavery had nearly ruined the state's basic agricultural economy. Although some vigorous planters and merchants managed to recoup their fortunes, farm tenancy (replacing the old plantation system) held most of the state's farmers in economic bondage. The Panic of 1873 was followed by two decades of agrarian hard times. The rice plantations, which had already begun to decline, were hardest hit.

Popular discontent was not ameliorated until the election (1890) of Benjamin Tillman, leader of the up-country farmers, as governor. Tillmanites wrested control of the Democratic party from the conservative element (the tidewater “Bourbon aristocracy”), reapportioned taxes and representation, expanded public education, and passed rudimentary labor reform laws. Reflecting another aspect of Tillman's policies, the constitution of 1895 initiated “Jim Crow laws” and adopted voting qualifications that excluded virtually all blacks from the crucial Democratic primaries. Renewed agrarian prosperity after 1900 was accompanied by political stagnation that lasted until the governorship (1914–18) of Richard I. Manning; progressive trends already evident in other parts of the country were now belatedly manifested in South Carolina in the passage of education and labor laws.

Agriculture again suffered a setback in the 1920s. Contributing factors were the destruction of the Sea Islands cotton crop by the boll weevil and the erosion of the land as a result of long adherence to the one-crop system. Industry, especially the textile industry (which had been increasing in importance since the Civil War), also suffered in the Great Depression of the 1930s. New Deal legislation and the state road-building program provided South Carolina with some relief. During World War I the position of African Americans had been improved through war work and service in the armed forces; however, in the 1920s the renewed power of the Ku Klux Klan had again brought oppression, and black migration began on a scale sufficient to bring the whites into the majority in the state by 1930.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Voting Rights, Desegregation, and Economic Growth
• The Decline of Agriculture and the Rise of Jim Crowism
• Civil War and Reconstruction
• Pre–Civil War Discontent
• The Coming of Revolution
• South Carolina as a Royal Colony
• Life under Proprietary Rule
• French, Spanish, and English Colonization
• Government, Politics, and Higher Education
• Economy
• Geography
• Facts and Figures
• Bibliography

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