Confederate Cash Crop
Exploring the relationship between Tobacco Labor, Monument Avenue, and Confederate Memorialization in Richmond
Tobacco in Unexpected Places
In the photograph above, an African-American man appears to be tending a tobacco plot adjacent to the Lee monument. The marble Confederate general’s pedestal and the wealthy district of Monument Avenue appear to grow literally out of Virginia’s tobacco fields. In fact, the buildings around it date this image to after 1917: The field grew up around the monument, not the other way around.
While some are interested in the purpose of the field --suggested it served as a World War I “victory garden ”--the juxtaposition of the general and crop raise larger questions about the relationship between tobacco and the confederate cause disguised under "states’ rights." The war was always about slavery and the ability to exploit labor. Richmond's economy depended on tobacco, and the tobacco industry had depended on enslaved labor. Following emancipation, the black-white labor divide in agriculture was reimagined.
Confederate memory sought to protect and moralize past economic and labor systems that depended on enslaved labor. Perhaps the field enabled Lee's position as a watchtower with Confederate oversight of black labor.
Creating a Confederate Cause
On May 29, 1890, the monument of Robert E. Lee was unveiled to the city of Richmond. What did this new symbol of Confederate memory seek to evoke in the city?
The Confederate cause sought to protect an exploitative economic system of enslaved labor. In 1890, this "Lost Cause" still remained present, except the economic system had shifted. Tobacco and the labor it necessitated required a strict enforcement of black-white labor divisions during Reconstruction.
Thousands of individuals came out to witness the creation of Confederate memory.
Monument Avenue and Lee Circle began to take shape around Confederate symbols and memorials. However, central to Richmond's landscape and economy was the same cash crop -- bright leaf tobacco.
Growing the "Lost Cause"
Tobacco fields spanned across southeastern Virginia. Reconstruction had created a problem for white elites. Their wealth had depended on their access to unpaid labor. In the years following emancipation, African Americans were met with opposition in their search for political voice and economic advancement. Tobacco landowners still sought to keep their power within the industry by maintaining previous labor divides.
Sharecropping would become a "solution" to the elites' problem, in which landowners contracted the labor of poor whites and former enslaved people in exchange for a “share” of the crop. African Americans sharecroppers, who often labored on their previous plantations, found themselves coerced by their lack of land and the threat of violence to purchase their food and supplies from their former masters at inflated prices. While this greatly benefited tobacco elites, many rural African American families found themselves increasingly landless and indebted across generations.
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