Independent Black Voices from the Late 19th Century

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Notes

1. Black independents created economic exchanges in the ports of Norfolk, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, and Houston; their newspapers included the National Alliance in Texas, the Midland Expressin Virginia, and the Alliance Advocate in North Carolina; notable strikes included the sugarcane workers strike of 1887 in Louisiana and the cotton pickers strike of 1891 in Arkansas; boycotts included the jute boycott from 1889 and 1891 in Georgia, and the general merchandise boycott in Mississippi in 1889; Omar H. Ali, “Black Populism in the New South, 1886–1898,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2003, see Chapter 2.

2. Although women comprised a quarter of the membership of the Colored Alliance in 1891 (some 300,000, out of 1.2 million members, according to figures supplied by the organization's General Superintendent)and many, like their male counterparts, also worked as farmers and agrarian laborerswe know little about their leadership role in the movement. The careers and contributions of African American female organizers in the movement include Phoebe Cobb and Fanny “the queen” Glass of the Black Knights of Labor in North Carolina in 1889; there were all–female assemblies of the Knights of Labor in Virginia, Arkansas, and Florida. The best known Black Populist female was Lutie A. Lytle, who served as the assistant enrolling clerk of the People's Party in 1895. She would later hold the distinction of becoming the first woman to teach law at the university level in the South. See Richard M. Humphrey, “History of the Colored Farmers National Alliance and CoOperative Union,” in The Farmer's Alliance History and Agricultural Digest, Nelson A. Dunning, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Alliance Publishing Co., 1891), 290; Robert C. McMath, Jr., “Southern White Farmers and the Organization of Black Farm Workers: A North Carolina Document,” Labor History, 18 (Winter 1977), 118–119; Noreen R. Connolly's “Attorney Lutie A. Lytle: Options and Obstacles of a Legal Pioneer,” The Nebraska Lawyer (January 1999), 9.

3. In 1892, Weaver received 1,027,329 popular votes. The People's Party gained notable support in areas of Louisiana and Virginia. The Party's gubernatorial candidates narrowly lost in Alabama and Texas, as well as Congressional seats in Georgia, including Tom Watson's; North Carolina elected 11 new independent representatives to the legislature; Joseph H. Gerteis, “Class and the Color Line: The Sources and Limits of Interracial Class Coalition, 1880–1896,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1999, 162.

4. William Gnatz, “The Negro and the Populist Movement in the South,” M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1961, 113–114; National Economist, September 13, 1890.

5. William E. Spriggs, “The Virginia Colored Farmers Alliance: A Case Study of Race and Class Identity,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Summer 1979), 198.

6. William J. Gaboury, “George Washington Murray and the Fight for Political Democracy in South Carolina,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 62, No. 3 (July 1977), 258–269.

7. Lynchburg, Daily Virginia, August 21, 1890; Spriggs, 194; New York Sun, December 4, 1890, quoted in the New York Age, December 13, 1890. Humphrey reportedly also made a speech along these lines at the Colored Alliance meeting at Ocala in 1890; National Economist, December 27, 1890.

8. People's Party Paper, July 27, 1894; Gerteis, 185, 229.

9. National Economist, March 5, 1892; Gerald H. Gaither, Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry in the “New South” (University: University of Alabama Press, 1977), 38, 40; Warwick's election as Assistant Secretary is detailed in the minutes taken at the St. Louis Convention of February 22, 1892, contained in the National Economist, March 5, 1892.

10. Jack Abramowitz, “The Negro in the Populist Movement,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 38, No. 3 (1953), 263; National Economist, March 5, 1892.

11. Virginia Sun, July 13, 1892; Spriggs, 200.

12. Topeka Call, July 24, 1892; Abramowitz, 278; Gaither, 41–43.

13. Topeka Daily Capital, July 5, 1892; Topeka Call, July 24, 1892; Girard T. Bryant, “The Populist Movement and the Negro,” M.A. thesis, University of Kansas, Lawrence, 1939, 66.

14. The 1892 Omaha platform foreshadowed amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as various pieces of local legislation and policies, enacted in the early 20th century. Regulatory measures against transportation monopolies (the Hepburn Act of 1906, for instance, gave the Interstate Commerce Commission greater power to regulate railroads, keeping costs down for small farmers who were trying to get their products to market), the 16th and 17th U.S. Constitutional Amendments (providing for the direct election of U.S. Senators and a progressive personal income tax, both in 1913), and federal subsidies for farmers (not until the 1930s through the Farm Securities Administration, and favoring more affluent and white farmers). The Farm Tenant Act of 1937 provided some loans to sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and agrarian laborers for purchasing land, supplies, livestock, and equipment, but largely hurt small farmers.

15. Gnatz, 29.

16. Ernest W. Winkler, ed., Platforms of Political Parties in Texas, No. 53, Bulletin of the University of Texas, 1916 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1916), 293, 297.

17. Gnatz, 29.

18. Bryant, 70; Abramowitz, 269.

19. Southern Mercury, August 11, 1892.

20. Abramowitz, 267.

21. Southern Mercury, June 30, 1892.

22. Quoted in Abramowitz, 267.

23. Gregg Cantrell's Feeding the Wolf: John B. Rayner and the Politics of Race, 1850–1918 (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2001).

24. Lawrence Rice, The Negro in Texas: 1874–1900 (Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 79; Winkler, 332; Roscoe C. Martin, The People's Party in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970; first published in 1933), 133; quoted in Abramowitz, 270.

25. Gnatz, 118; People's Party Paper, April 9, 1894.

26. The People's Party won 22 seats in the Texas legislature in 1894. Martin, 210–211; Abramowitz, 268.

27. Gaither, 121.

28. Wilmington Star, August 1892; Simeon A. Delap, “The Populist Party in North Carolina,”

29. Raleigh News and Observer, September 30, 1892. Jack Abramowitz notes the scene in “The Negro in the Populist Movement,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 38, No. 3 (July 1953), 282.

30. National Economist, October 8, 1892. The Raleigh Newsreported on September 30, 1892 that Weaver was “escorted to Brookside Park by 300 white men and fifty negroes, all on horseback.”

31. Raleigh News and Observer, September 30, 1892; National Economist, October 8, 1892.

32. Craig M. Thurtell, “The Fusion Insurgency in North Carolina: Origins to Ascendency, 1876–1896,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1998, 146.

33. Raleigh News and Observer, September 30, 1892.

34. Ibid., October 1, 1892.

35. Contested Election Cases, Martin v. Lockhart (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), 176–177.

36. Thurtell, 150–151.

37. William A. Mabry, The Negro in North Carolina Politics Since Reconstruction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1940), 35; Abramowitz, 282.

38. Thurtell, 46, 48.

39. Nationally, the Republican Party favored the gold standard, a protective tariff, pro–banking legislation, and other legislation partial to the business community. Civil and political legislation were increasingly sidelined at the national level, impacting on state parties and conservatizing African American leaders in the party. In contrast to the Republican Party platform, Populists demands included election reform, government ownership of railroads, telephone, and telegraph companies, the Alliance subtreasury program, and free and unlimited coinage of silverpolicies almost diametrically opposed to the principles of the Republican Party. Gaither, 90.

40. Ibid.

41. Gaither makes careful note that despite the lure of money or favors offered to African Americans to vote for Democratic candidates, “[black] voters still supported the Fusionists and their program in their eagerness to overturn somehow the seemingly irresistible Democratic hegemony”; Ibid., 92–93.

42. Thurtell, 219.

43. The coalition is reminiscent of Black Abolitionists working in the unusual coalitions that culminated in the establishment of the Republican Partynorthern Whigs, Know Nothings, Barnburner Democrats, Free Soilers, and white Abolitionists. See Eric Foner's Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).

44. Contested Election Cases, Martin v. Lockhart, 176–177. See also James M. Beeby, “'Equal Rights to All and Special Privileges to None': Grass–Roots Populism in North Carolina,”

45. C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), 276–277; Thurtell, 213–214.

46. Gnatz, 43; The fusion coalition also reversed discriminatory “stock laws” (fencing off land) that made it harder for small farmers to compete against large landowners.

47. Black Populists helped Watson transform his image: “Watson's earlier anti–Black voting record in the Georgia Legislature brought him under fire from Black audiences when he ran for re–election to Congress in 1892 as a Populist. His attempts to explain his record were apparently met with skepticism, and his supporters were compelled to argue that Watson was … a new man”; Robert Allen, Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1983), 73. See also Charles Crowe, “Tom Watson, Populists, and Blacks Reconsidered,”

48. Gnatz, 77; Atlanta Journal, May 17, 1894.

49. The Virginia Sun on October 12, 1892, wrote, “It is time the Democrats ceased abusing the People's Party as a negro party.” Historians have noted “… the efforts of the dominant party [i.e. Democratic Party] to portray the third party as the 'Negro party' …,” or as “the party of the Negro.” See Abramowitz, 275, and Gaither, 84.

50. White Democrats began to panic even at the earliest stages of the People's Party's development. North Carolina's Democratic Governor, Zebulon Vance, wrote in 1890 “There is an uprising of the agricultural class … which amounts to little short of a revolution.” Vance to Elias Carr, July 1, 1890, Elias Carr Papers, East Carolina University Manuscript Collection, North Carolina.

51. Georgia Baptist quoted in Progressive Farmer, October 30, 1894.

52. Letter from H. I. Taylor, People's Party Paper, September 14, 1894.

53. Ibid., June 22, August 31, 1894; Gnatz, 120.

54. People's Party Paper, February 16, 1894.

55. Savannah Tribune, August 25, September 1, 1894;

56. Atlanta Constitution, October 4, 5, 1894; Abramowitz, 275–276.

57. Atlanta Constitution,October 5, 1894.

58. Gerteis, 232, 235.

59. Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 295–296; Gerteis, 163.

60. The Omaha Platform of 1892 (building on the Cleburne Demands of 1886) had called for the direct election of U.S. Senators, an eight hour workday, a progressive personal income tax, a federal sub–treasury loan program, and government regulation of railroads, telegraph, and steamboats.

61. Abramowitz, 287.

62. Henry D. Lloyd, “The Populists at St. Louis,” Review of Reviews, Vol. 14 (September 1896), 299–300; William L. Katz, Eyewitness: The Negro in American History (New York: Pitman Publishing Corporation, 1967), 319; Allen, 69.

63. In 1896, Tom Watson was successfully nominated by the People's Party for Vice–President over the Democratic nominee Arthur Sewall. Bryan would however ignore Watson's position on the ticket and never publicly accepted Watson as a running mate. Consequently, Watson's name did not even appear on the ballot in several places. Locally, the People's Party proceeded with fusion arrangements with Republicans. Gerteis, 163.

64. Daniel Brantley, “Blacks and Louisiana Constitutional Development, 1890–Present: A Study in Southern Political Thought and Race Relations,”

65. Bryant, 118; Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861–1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991).

66. Ayers, 301–304; Lawrence Goodwyn, “Populist Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study,” American Historical Review, 76 (December 1971), 1453–56.

67. Robin D.G. Kelley's Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Winston James, “Being Red and Black in Jim Crow America: On the Ideology and Travails of Afro–America's Socialist Pioneers, 1877–1930,” in Charles Payne and Adam Green, eds., Time Longer than Rope: A Century of African American Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 336–399; Greta d Jong, “'With the Aid of God and the F.S.A.' The Louisiana Farmers' Union and the African American Freedom Struggle in the New Deal Era,” in Time Longer Than Rope, 230–275.

68. C. Van Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 149–188.

69. In 1988, Fulani was on the ballot in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. She was also on the ballot in over forty states in 1992, running for president as an independent for a second time. Additionally, she became the second independent to receive federal matching funds. Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Politics and Black Political Behavior (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994); Lenora B. Fulani, The Making of a Fringe Candidate (New York: Castillo International, 1992).

70. Relative to the total U.S. population, the Black community has markedly higher levels of infant mortality, disproportionately higher levels of incarceration, unemployment, and lower life expectancy rates. Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 154–159; Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Ballantine Books, rev. 1995).

71. Timothy Pigford, et. al., Plaintiffs v. Dan Glickman, Secretary, United States Department of Agriculture, Defendant, 185 F.R.D. 82, U.S. Dist. Lexis 5220 (U.S. District Court, D.C., April 14, 1999); See detailed report by Arianne Callender and Brendan DeMelle, “Obstruction of Justice: USDA Undermines Historic Civil Rights Settlement with Black Farmers,” (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Working Group, 2004) <http://www.ewg.org/reports/blackfarmers/> [Accessed Sun Dec 5 10:48:22 US/Central 2004]

72. In 1972, for example, there were 2,427 Black elected officials; in 1993 there were 8,106an increase of 334%. Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African–Americans in the Post–Civil Rights Era (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996).

73. Jamie C. Ruff, “Democrats faulted for weak rural showing,”

74. David A. Bositis, “Diverging Generations: The Transformation of African American Policy Views” (Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 2001)

75. Jacqueline Salit, “Unpopular Partnerships (Bloomber's Dilemna),”

76. In 2003 a national organizing process called Choosing an Independent President, sponsored by the Committee for a Unified Independent Party, was launched to bring together independents from around the country to continue to build the political presence of independent voters. That process actively includes some three thousand individuals from several dozen organizations and state–based political parties, including the Alabama Independent Movement, the Massachusetts Coalition of Independent Voters, the California Coaltion for Political Reform and the Committee for an Independent Voice, Independent Texans, the Independence Party of New York, the Green Party of Pennsylvania, and disaffected Democrats and Republicans across the country. See: <http://www.cuip.org/chip/chip.html> [Accessed Sun Dec 5 11:17:42 US/Central 2004]

77. Richmond Dispatch, August 11, 1891.