Boll weevils and the postwar recovery of European farms caused the supply and prices of cotton to fall, a devastation to Greenville's economy. In the 1920s, large businesses such as insurance and department stores began to replace the mills as the primary businesses in the county. Also in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan operated to repress these questions more vigorously than in the 1860s and 1870s.
The Great Depression hit the textile and banking industries of Greenville hard. In response to the depression, mill workers began thinking of unionizing but either the government, violence, or concessions quashed most threats of unionism. Alphabet agencies of President Roosevelt's New Deal created many of contemporary Greenville's civic buildings and public places. With the arrival of World War II, Greenville's business picked up. By the end of the war, agriculture was dying in the county, replaced by diversified industry, including chemicals and technology. The textile industry was revived and, by the 1960s, would become world famous. However, diversity in industry was not the only diversity with which Greenville had to deal after the war. With the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to integrate schools, Greenville was hesitant to comply until local businessman Charles Daniel brought the business community to see the threat that demonstrations were causing business.
Contemporary Greenville was a product of its textile past. Many of the mills still exist in some capacity. Meanwhile, a short jaunt outside the city will find BMW and Michelin headquarters. Greenville was a city built on business yet respecting of its past.
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Huff, Archie Vernon, Jr. Greenville: The History of the City and County in the South Carolina Piedmont. University of South Carolina Press (Columbia), 1995.
© Center for the Study of Piedmont History, Furman University