ABSTRACT
In telling their life stories, the Southern black women introduced in this chapter fret over their connections to the “white” South while refusing to remain in their place as second-class citizens during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Black disfranchisement, lynch law/mob rule, “peonage slavery,” and the creation of Black Codes to enforce systematic oppression all signifi ed the loss of political advantages African Americans had gained during Reconstruction. Black education, paid labor of the black masses, and the rise of a black middle class only antagonized white Southerners. Such problematic race relations captured the public’s attention, bringing what most Americans considered as a regional issue into a national focus as the South’s “Negro Problem.”
