Populism in the South Revisited

New Interpretations and New Departures

James M. Beeby

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781496807878
• eBook ISBN: 9781496800206
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The Populist Movement was the largest mass movement for political and economic change in the history of the American South until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Populist Movement in this book is defined as the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party, as well as the Agricultural Wheel and Knights of Labor in the 1880s and 1890s. The Populists threatened the political hegemony of the white racist southern Democratic Party during populism's high point in the mid-1890s; and the populists threw the New South into a state of turmoil Populism in the South Revisited: New Interpretations and New Departures brings together nine of the best new works on the populist movement in the South that grapple with several larger themes—such as the nature of political insurgency, the relationship between African Americans and whites, electoral reform, new economic policies and producerism, and the relationship between rural and urban areas—in case studies that center on several states and at the local level. Each essay offers both new research and new interpretations into the causes, course, and consequences of the populist insurgency. One essay analyzes how notions of debt informed the Populist insurgency in North Carolina, the one state where the Populists achieved statewide power, while another analyzes the Populists' failed attempts in Grant Parish, Louisiana, to align with African Americans and Republicans to topple the incumbent Democrats. Other topics covered include populist grassroots organizing with African Americans to stop disfranchisement in North Carolina; the Knights of Labor and the relationship with populism in Georgia; organizing urban populism in Dallas, Texas; Tom Watson's relationship with Midwest Populism; the centrality of African Americans in populism, a comparative analysis of Populism across the Deep South, and how the rhetoric and ideology of populism impacted socialism and the Garvey movement in the early twentieth century. Together these studies offer new insights into the nature of southern populism and the legacy of the Peoples' Party in the South.

INDEX

Adams, J. W., 208

Adams, Thomas B., 19

African Americans, 5

in 1892 Georgia election, 3–4

in 1892 Louisiana election, 21–25

and African Methodist Episcopal Church, 133, 134, 218

in Dallas, Texas, 59

in Grant Parish, Louisiana, 7–9, 11–15, 17, 30n15

in North Carolina and attitudes toward debt, 101–2, 107–9, 111–12, 117, 118

and Populism in the Deep South, 145

relationship with People’s Party in Grant Parish, Louisiana, 22–25, 26

relationship with People’s Party in North Carolina, 178–98

in Republican Party, 14

testimony of, 183–98

and United Negro Improvement Association, 202–20

Aldrich, William, 163

Ali, Omar H., 213, 222n12

Allen, William, 86

American Federation of Labor, 83, 89, 92

Ameringer, Oscar, 207, 209–10, 211

Appeal to Reason, 204, 205, 209, 210, 211

Archer, Samuel, 101

Arnett, Alex, 162

Atlanta Constitution, 37

Augusta Chronicle, 43

Aycock, Charles B., 183–86, 192, 193

Ayers, Edward, 79n38, 132

Bamber, Bennie, 217

Basnight, Jessie, 190–91

Beddingfield, Eugene, 119

Beeby, James M., 131, 141n8

Belk, William Henry, 110–11

Blanchard, Newton C., 10, 18, 30n18, 32n29

Brian, Benjamin F., 11, 12, 16, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 31n22, 31n23

Brian, Hardy L., 19, 21, 23

Bright, P. H., 189

Brown, Benjamin, 45

Bryan, William Jennings, 94, 165–66, 167, 168–69, 193, 204

Burton, Orville ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Populism in the American South
• “The Race Cry Doesn’t Scare Us” . . . Or Does It?: Populism and Race in Grant Parish, Louisiana
• “Workingmen’s Democracy” in the Deep South: The Knights of Labor in Georgia Politics, 1884–1892
• “Of Whom Shall the Third Party Be Composed?”: Urban Laborers and the Origins of the People’s Party in Dallas, Texas
• Agrarian Rebel, Industrial Workers: Tom Watson and the Prospects of a Farmer-Labor Alliance
• “Hard Times Is the Cry”: Debt in Populist Thought in North Carolina
• Reconceptualizing Black Populism in the New South
• Creating a New South: The Political Culture of Deep South Populism
• “[T]he Angels from Heaven Had Come Down and Wiped Their Names offi the Registration Books”: The Demise of Grassroots Populism in North Carolina
• Agrarian Producerism after Populism: Socialism and Garveyism in the Rural South
• List of Contributors
• Index