Black sharecroppers and poor white farmers were
faced with
--falling wages and prices
--high taxes
--heavy debt
Grange or Patrons of Husbandry
a pattern of future material-based coalitions
Poor whites:
--lacked leadership
--social and economic focus
Early phase:
Tom Watson-“You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced
of your earnings.”
Southern Alliance
--African Americans not allowed to join
--segregated into separate, white-led Colored Farmer’s
Alliance
Farmer Discontent
Industrial Revolution late nineteenth century
Farmers felt left behind
--No longer self-sufficient
--Dependent on banks
Exploited when they bought and sold goods
At the mercy of railroads shipping charges
Businessmen got richer, farmers got poorer
Southern yeomen farmers
Cotton prices declined 1865-1890
--Patrons of Husbandry or Grange, 1870
--Promoted cooperatives and political
involvement
--Regulation of railroad shipping rates on
agricultural products
Farmers’ Alliances
Southern Farm Alliance
--Railroad regulation
--Agricultural education
The Colored Farmers’ Alliance
--founded in Texas in 1886
--espoused self-help and economic cooperation
--lobbied legislatures, conducted boycotts, and called
for strikes
Claimed one million members,1889
Strict racial distinctions with Southern Alliance
--spread to every state in the South and maintained an estimated
membership of 1,200,000, of whom 300,000 were women
The Populist Party
The People’s Party
--Serious challenge to Democrats and Republicans
--Supported radical changes
--Government ownership: railroads, telegraph, telephone
--Urged southern white and black men to join them
--made efforts to win the support of industrial workers
--“the urban workingmen” the Populist platform stated, “are denied
the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor
beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized
by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are
rapidly degenerating into European conditions.”
To combat this situation, the Populists supplemented their
program for currency and other general reforms by taking over
many of the demands traditionally pressed by the National Labor
Union, the Knights of Labor and even the American Federation of
Labor
Revised demands:
--restrictions on immigration
--enforcement of the eight-hour day on government
projects
--an the outlawing of the “army of mercenaries known
as the Pinkerton system”
--appealed to black voter support
--allowed Af. Ams. to serve as leaders
--undermined as Democratic leaders convinced poor
whites that a vote for the interracial Populist party was
racial treason
Democrats
--Opposed any black participation in politics
--Little interest in the needs of white yeoman
farmers
--Critical of “redeemer” governments
--Wealthy businessmen and lawyers
Populists lost national election of 1892 and again in 1896 although
they did win congressional and gubernatorial races
Coincidence?
In 1892, Democrats carried every southern state. That year 235
people were lynched in the United States, more than any other
year in history.
--Southern Democrats outraged over appeals to black men
--Black voters in a position to tip the political scales
--Fraud, violence, and terror
Black Populism in the New South: 1886-1898