Despite the widely-shared prosperity, segregation developed
on the Eastern Shore in the same way it did across much of the South and
with the same restrictive effects. Separate schools were constitutionally
mandated and separate churches the norm. In the towns, blacks lived in
separate neighborhoods. In the countryside, white and black residences
might be interspersed or in discrete settlements. Segregation by custom
on local public transportation preceded the railroad. In 1882 the Eastern
Shore Steamboat Company's new steamer "The Eastern Shore" was
constructed with a 38-cylinder, 9-foot stroke engine and a hold capacity
of 3,000 barrels of potatoes. It also featured spacious staterooms and
cabins, "fitted up separately" by race and gender. In contrast,
the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad ran racially-mixed cars
for a well-attended excursion to a circus at Pocomoke City in 1885. Not
for another twenty years would Virginia require separate railroad coaches.
The commonwealth effectively disenfranchised its black voters in 1902,
smothering decades of intense political activism and engagement. On the
Eastern Shore, as in other places of well-organized black political activity,
some African Americans persisted in registering and voting, but their
numbers were greatly reduced. In black-majority Northampton County only
about a quarter of adult black males managed to hurdle the "understanding
clause" and register. When an aspiring black voter was asked by the
registrar the meaning of a section of the constitution, he replied, "It
means the Negro is done voting."
59
Eastern Shore blacks made less money than whites, were more likely to
be day laborers, lived in poorer housing, possessed fewer amenities, were
less well educated, and were less mobile. Nevertheless, Eastern Shore
blacks enjoyed a higher standard of living, were more likely to have their
ballots honestly counted, and suffered less from legal and extra-legal
violence than their counterparts in many other Southern locales. Race
relations in the South varied from region to region, state to state, county
to county, doorstep to doorstep. For example, Somerset County on the Eastern
Shore of Maryland was economically and demographically similar to Accomack
on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, but blacks in Somerset were far more
likely to be lynched or executed. From the end of the Civil War through
1935, only one black was lynched and two legally executed in Accomack
(and two of the three incidents occurred before 1871). Meanwhile, in adjoining
Somerset at least three were lynched and ten legally executed. Moreover,
in 1906 the white sheriff and posse of Northampton County stood down a
mob that had come by train from Somerset intent on lynching a young black
man accused of raping a white woman in that county.
60
African-American migration onto the Eastern Shore picked up pace after
the arrival of the railroad with job opportunities opening in its wake.
Black population increased nearly as rapidly as white in Accomack and
Northampton. Black people migrating to the Eastern Shore appear to have
arrived in family groups (just as did white newcomers). They were drawn
to the peninsula by abundant jobs at good wages. The black community’s
relative prosperity found tangible expression in the construction of
numerous
houses, churches, schools, businesses, lodge halls, and a bank.
61
Although Virginia led the nation in the number and percentage of black
landowner farmers, on the Eastern Shore the rates of black farm owners
were well below the state average. Blacks were more likely to be agricultural
laborers than tenant farmers, more likely to be tenants than landowners.
In 1925, blacks owned 169 farms in each of the two counties ― 15.6
percent of the farms in Northampton but only 5.2 percent of those in Accomack.
Whites, if less likely to be laborers than farmers, were as likely to
be tenants as owners. In 1925, 59.8 percent of the farms in Accomack and
45.7 percent in Northampton were operated by tenants. Because crops brought
consistently high prices, Eastern Shore tenants preferred share to cash
rental. No matter how they paid the rent, the booming agricultural economy
brought them good returns for their labor. Most Eastern Shore farmers,
black or white, were small operators as likely to know well the backside
of a mule as the laborers, black or white, whom they employed. At the
harvest, everyone, irrespective of race, gender, or age gathered the potatoes
from the fields.
62
In the fisheries, blacks worked as hands on oyster dredgeboats (skippers
were overwhelmingly white), as independent watermen (oyster planters were
white), and as shuckers and pickers in the seafood houses (seafood dealers
were white). Whites also worked as dredger hands, independent watermen,
and shuckers and pickers. Some workplace segregation was apparent. Oyster
houses employed either black shuckers or white. The reputed world’s
largest oyster house on Folly Creek probably employed black shuckers while
the houses on Chincoteague employed white. Black shuckers came from Delaware,
Maryland, and North Carolina for the good wages on the Eastern Shore.
Some oyster grounds were racially exclusive as the place name Tar Bay
implies. In the lumber industry, both blacks and whites worked as timber
cutters, cartmen, and sawmill hands. The crew chiefs usually were white
and the lumber dealers exclusively so.
63
Nearly every business and farm on the Eastern Shore needed good labor
and African Americans took advantage of the opportunities around them.
When white landholders organized to recruit immigrant workers in New
York City, local blacks organized to counteract it with pressure of
their own.
The white landowners admitted that they could neither recruit enough
immigrants to change the labor market nor could they always compete
with the seafood
industries where "at certain seasons of the year . . . larger wages
are given them [African-American workers] at the fish factories and
in
the oyster business than they [white landowners] can afford to pay."
Thus, the Eastern Shore's mixed and booming economy gave laborers,
black and white, leverage in their quest for better wages.
64
The economic mobility and opportunity African Americans enjoyed on the
Shore also came alongside rising political expectations and opportunities.
In the 1880s Virginia Senator William Mahone made the "Readjuster"
movement into a biracial political coalition aimed at defeating the Conservative
Democratic Party and its blend of white supremacy and elite class protection.
Mahone's brand of Readjuster politics was especially attractive to the
Eastern Shore's black voters. White Democrats there took notice, and they
conveniently mistook the booming labor market for its political effects.
Because of Mahonism, they sneered, "the negro seems to be above labor
on the farm."
65 Published: 31 July 2007
© 2007 William G. Thomas III, Brooks Miles Barnes, Tom Szuba and
Southern Spaces 
