Mason & Dixon Line: Differences between America's North and South
(Geographical)

Introduction:

The Mason & Dixon line was the work of surveyors marking state boundaries, but it became the symbol for marking both differences and conflicts between America's North and South after the Civil War.  In his final publicized appearance in Alabama in 1970, Hugo Black mentioned that none of his ancestor ever lived above the Mason & Dixon line.  For him and other Southerners, it divided realities and perceptions on both sides.

Questions:

1.  One of the thrills of a four-year old Hugo Black was seeing a steam engine for the first time.  By the time Black moved to Birmingham, Northern financiers owned virtually all the railroads in Alabama and most of the South.  How did this fact shape Alabama politics and its white progressive movement?

2.  After US Steel purchased Birmingham's TCI Company in the early 1900s, Northern financial institutions and industrial giants owned most of Birmingham's industrial facilities.  What difference did this make to Birmingham's social condition and its growth through the 1920s?

3.  Black represented a poor white mother against the Northern-owned Illinois Central Railroad in the Miniard case (chapter 7).  How might Black have been hampered in his case if it had been an Alabama-owned railroad?

4.  What are some possible explanations for why the Northern owners of Birmingham mining industries permitted their Southern managers to defeat the interracial mine workers' strike by marshalling the state soldiers and using race-baiting techniques?

5.  US Senator Oscar Underwood of Alabama sought the Democratic nomination for US President in 1924 by appealing to Southern white voters as a favorite son of the South and to Northern Democrats (increasingly immigrant) as an anti-Klan candidate.  How did his strategy illustrate differences and similarities between the politics of the North and South at that time?