ABSTRACT
Following manumission, and the end of a one-sided, legally sustained relationship between masters and slaves, a new foundation for social inferiority had to be forged in the South if the continued domination of African Americans was to be sustained. A few newly educated African Americans caught on to the dilemma of being marginal in Southern society. The coherent worldview supplied by the ideology of the established African-American churches in the South did not serve its members well in the North. Poor African Americans had to settle for run-down apartments at high rents and bought furniture “on time,” paying burdensome interest rates that substantially raised the cost of the purchase. The use of stigma theory has spilled over into other social sciences when it comes to understanding race in America. In nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America, the racial divides were made personal to immigrant workers at particular stages of industrialization and industrial conflict.
