![]() ![]() Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. ![]() Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. ![]() Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. There were no laws segregating the races then. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. ![]()
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