Final answer:
Henry W. Grady's New South vision focused on economic development without social and racial equality for African Americans due to prevailing prejudices and interests of the time that sought to maintain African Americans as inexpensive labor while fearing their competition and upward mobility.
Step-by-step explanation:
Henry W. Grady's vision of the New South was rooted in the desire for economic development and progress through industrialization and modernization of agriculture. Grady and other proponents of the New South sought to transform the South's economy from its dependence on plantation agriculture to a more diversified economy with industry and small farms. Although Grady valued education and hoped to promote progress, his vision did not include equality for African Americans, which was consistent with many of his contemporaries' views in the South. The prevailing sentiments of the time, especially among white Southerners, included fear of African American competition in the labor market, the use of African Americans as inexpensive labor, and the social prejudices that resisted their upward development. Ultimately, the New South vision was one of economic progress and not social and racial equality, which is why concepts such as equal rights and suffrage for African Americans were not incorporated into Grady's blueprint for the region. This exclusion revealed the complexity of post-Civil War racial attitudes and the challenges of Reconstruction in addressing deeply rooted racial inequalities.