Existing comment:
Harper's Weekly Cover, "Another Step Towards Civilization," May 31, 1879
African Americans, able to move more freely after the Civil War, searched for new opportunities. White landowners sought to control this movement of labor that disrupted the plantation economy. In 1879, leaders gathered in Vicksburg, Mississippi to discuss ways to improve the situation. This Harper's Weekly illustration lampooned the convention as a spider trap to blacks who succumbed to empty pledges of white landowners. |