Black populism
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Following the end of
Beginnings
Between 1886 and 1898 black farmers,
Goals
Despite opposition, black Populists carried out a wide range of activities:
- Establishing farming exchanges
- Raising money for schools
- Publishing newspapers
- Lobbying for better legislation
- Mounting boycotts against agricultural trusts
- Carrying out strikes for better wages
- Protesting the convict-lease system and lynching
- Demanding Black jurors in cases involving black defendants
- Promoting local political reforms and federal supervision of elections
- Running independent and fusion campaigns.
Black Populism found early expression in various agrarian organizations, including the
Resistance and failure
By the late 1890s, under relentless attack – propaganda campaigns warning of a “second Reconstruction” and “Negro rule,” physical intimidation, violence, and assassinations of leaders and foot soldiers – the movement was crushed. A key figure in the attack on Black Populism was
The notion that African Americans had somehow betrayed populism would haunt the Georgia People's Party from the very beginning. Populists had realized the political importance of blacks. Of the state's forty thousand Republicans voters, a considerable majority were former bondsmen. If the white votes were to split, they might decide the outcome of any state election. But therein lay a predicament. How were Populists to court the black votes without losing the whites? How were they to keep whites from supporting the "negro party"? An attempt had to be made to win over blacks. It was a risky scheme, but it contained a degree of precedent in state politics. In the 1870s and 1880s, democrats and independents had sometimes used the same device when the white votes splits. In those days many whites were willing to allow African American men the ballot, especially when it could be sometimes bought for so little.[5]
Black populism was destroyed, marking the end of organized political resistance to the return of
References
- ^ Ali 2008, pp. 74–100
- ^ Ali 2010, pp. 113–167.
- ^ Ali 2010, pp. 13–77.
- ^ Rochester, Anna (1943), The Populist Movement in the United States, New York: International Publishers, p. 59
- ^ Barton, C. Shaw (1947), The Wool-Hat Boys – Georgia's Populist Party, Louisiana State University Press, p. 78
- ^ Ali 2005, pp. 6–18.
Sources
- Adam, Anthony J. (2004), Black Populism in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography, Westport, CT: Praeger, ISBN 0-313-32439-5.
- ISBN 978-1-60473-778-3.
- Ali, Omar H. (2008), In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third Party Movements in the United States, Athens: Ohio University Press, ISBN 978-0-8214-1806-2or 978-0-8214-1807-9.
- Ali, Omar H. (July 2006), "Standing Guard at the Door of Liberty: Black Populism in South Carolina, 1886–1895", The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 107 (3): 190–203.
- Ali, Omar H. (Spring 2005), "Independent Black Voices from the late 19th century: Black Populists and the Struggle Against the Southern Democracy", Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 7 (2): 4–18, S2CID 144383083.
- Ali, Omar H. (2003), Black Populism in the New South, 1886–1898, Columbia University, Ph.D. dissertation, UMI Number 3104783.
- Du Bois, W. E. B. [1935] 1992. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Atheneum. (ISBN 0-689-70820-3)
- Gaither, Gerald H. 1977. Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry in the 'New South'. University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. (ISBN 0-689-70820-3)
- Goodwyn, Lawrence 1976. Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Hahn, Steven. 2003. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (ISBN 0-674-01765-X)
- Kantrowitz, Stephen. 2000. Ben Tillman & the Reconstruction of White Supremacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. (ISBN 0-8078-4839-5)
- Trelease, Allen. W. 1995. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. (ISBN 0-8071-1953-9)
- Wood, Forest G. 1970. Black Scare: The Racist Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press.