>>
>> The rising of "the people" was an avowedly white affair; the democratic
>
>mbs: Bull. There was a substantial black populist movement. In
>some cases it organized directly in conjunction with whites, in others
>separately but in alliance. Now clearly race relations among populists
>were not models for today, but in the context of the times there were
>many bright spots. It's silly to criticize the pops for not organizing
>jointly with blacks, since in the South this would not have been
>permitted. It was not possible. Even so, the black components
>of the movement were underground to an important extent, a
>circumstance which contributes to a lack of information
>about them.
Larry Goodwyn, in "Democratic Promise," shows that white Populists did organize publicly with black sharecroppers in the South and Texas. When the Texas People's Party was organized in 1891 it was interracial and elected two blacks to the state executive committee. There was at least cooperation between the white and colored alliances elsewhere in the South. It was this sort of coalition-building and the threat it presented to the ruling Bourbon Democrats that resulted in the imposition of segregation laws in the 1890s to prevent such a coalition from recurring -- and largely successful efforts to erase the memory that blacks and whites ever had cooperated.
----------------------------------- JAMES M. CULLEN PO Box 150517, Austin TX 78715-0517 Email: jcullen at austin.rr.com -----------------------------------