New South Quotes
Grady, a Georgian, prompted himself as a spokesman for the “New South” and while he did no advocate slavery and the brutality that had been inflicted on Southern Negroes, he was a strong white supremacist as this quotation demonstrates. He was only “liberal” compared with the total revanchist racists. However, when in the North he spoke kindly about the Negro. See Quotation 643652.
He often spoke in the North to try and explain the virtues of the “New South” with an idea of diminishing the stigma the South has borne every since the founding of the nation. In this particular speech, His audience included J. P. Morgan and H. M. Flagler at New York’s Delmonico's Restaurant at a meeting of the New England Society of New York. He gave a picture of a middle class society, but the reality was there was a very small middle class in the South at that time. Most farmers were tenant farmers and didn’t even own their own land. And the 50 homes for every palace were far below the standard with which the North had become familiar.
He then changed his vote to Aye and made this statement. He was the only Southerner in Congress to do so or to urge cooperation with the new law. The result was there was a New South but it took over 50 years because of the obstruction of the segregationists.
