Following the collapse of Reconstruction, African Americans created a broad-based independent political movement in the South: Black Populism.

Beginnings

Distinct from the primarily White Populist Movement, between 1886 and 1898 Black farmers, sharecroppers, and agrarian laborers organized their communities to combat the rising tide of Jim Crow. As Black Populism asserted itself and grew into a regional force, it met fierce resistance from the white planter and business elite that, through the Democratic Party and its affiliated network of courts, militias, sheriffs, and newspapers, maintained tight control of the region. Violence against Black Populism was often organized through the Ku Klux Klan.

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 Colored Agricultural Wheels , the southern Knights of Labor, the Cooperative Workers of America , and the Colored Farmers Alliance . However, facing the limitations in attempting to implement their reforms absent of engaging the electoral process, Black Populists helped to launch the People’s Party and used the Republican Party in fusion campaigns.

Resistence and failure

By the late 1890s, under relentless attack – propaganda campaigns warning of a “second Reconstruction” and “Negro rule,” physical intimidation, violence, and targeted assassinations of leaders and foot soldiers – the movement was crushed. A key figure in the attack on Black Populism was White Populist leader Ben Tillman. Black Populism was destroyed, marking the end of organized political resistance to the return of White supremacy in the South in the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Black Populism stands as the largest independent political uprising in the South until the modern Civil Rights movement.

Exernal Link

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References: White Populism v. Black Populism

Ali, Omar H., "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, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring 2005)

Ali, Omar H. 2003 "Black Populism in the New South, 1886-1898," Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York, NY (UMI Number: 3104783)

Adam, Anthony J. 2004. Black Populism in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Praeger. (ISBN 0313324395)

Gaither, Gerald H. 1977. Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry in the 'New South'. University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. (ISBN 0689708203)

Goodwyn, Lawrence 1976. Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Du Bois, W. E. B. [1935] 1992. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Atheneum. (ISBN 0689708203)

Wood, Forest G. 1970. Black Scare: The Racist Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Trelease, A. W. 1995. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. (ISBN 0807119539)

Kantrowitz, Stephen. 2000. Ben Tillman & the Reconstruction of White Supremacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. (ISBN 0807825301 or ISBN 0807848395)