People's Part at peak of activity (jan 1, 1890 – jan 1, 1896)

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Omaha Platform: An 1892 statement by the Populists calling for public ownership of transportation and communication networks, protection of land from monopoly and foreign ownership, looser monetary policy, and a federal income tax on the rich.

As Democrats took power in Washington in 1892, they faced rising pressure from rural voters in the South and West who had organized the Farmers’ Alliance. Savvy politicians responded quickly. Iowa Democrats, for example, took up some of the farmers’ demands, forestalling creation of a separate farmer-labor party in that state. But other politicians listened to Alliance pleas and did nothing. It was a response they came to regret.

Republicans utterly dominated Kansas, a state chock-full of Union veterans and railroad boosters, and their leaders treated the Farmers’ Alliance with contempt. In 1890, the Kansas Alliance joined with the Knights of Labor to create a People’s Party. They then stunned the nation by capturing four-fifths of the lower house of the Kansas legislature and most of the state’s congressional seats. The victory electrified labor and agrarian radicals nationwide. In July 1892, delegates from these groups met at Omaha, Nebraska, and formally created the national People’s Party, soon known as the Populists. In recognizing an “irrepressible conflict between capital and labor,” Populists split from the mainstream parties, demanding stronger government to protect ordinary Americans. Their Omaha Platform called for public ownership of railroad and telegraph systems, protection of land from monopoly and foreign ownership, a federal income tax on the rich, and a looser monetary policy to help borrowers. Some Populist allies went further to make their point. In New Mexico, the Gorras Blancas, a vigilante group of small-scale Mexican American farmers, protested exploitative railroads and “land grabbers” by intimidating railroad workers and cutting fences on large Anglo farms.


Populist leaders represented a grassroots uprising of ordinary farmers, and some won colorful nicknames. After a debate triumph based on his powerful oratory, James H. Davis of Texas became known as “Cyclone.” Mary E. Lease, a fierce critic of economic policies that benefitted the wealthy, was derided as “Yellin’ Mary Ellen”; her fellow Kansan Jerry Simpson was called “Sockless Jerry” after he ridiculed a wealthy opponent for wearing “fine silk hosiery,” boasting that he himself wore no socks at all. The national press, based in northeastern cities, ridiculed such “hayseed politicians,” but farmers insisted on being taken seriously. In the run-up to one election, a Populist writer encouraged party members to sing these lyrics to the tune of an old gospel hymn:

I once was a tool of oppression, As green as a sucker could be

And monopolies banded together To beat a poor hayseed like me….

But now I’ve roused up a little, And their greed and corruption I see,

And the ticket we vote next November Will be made up of hayseeds like me.

Driven by farmers’ votes, the People’s Party had mixed success in attracting other constituencies. Its labor planks won support among Alabama steelworkers and Rocky Mountain miners, but not among many other industrial workers, who stuck with the major parties. Prohibitionist and women’s suffrage leaders attended Populist conventions, hoping their issues would be taken up, but they were disappointed. The legacies of the Civil War also hampered the party. Southern Democrats, warned that Populists, were really Radical Republicans in disguise, while northeastern Republicans claimed the southern “Pops” were ex-Confederates plotting another round of treason. Despite these issues, the Populists, as they became known, captured a million votes in November. They returned to Washington with three representatives in the U.S. Senate and eleven in the House (Map 19.2) — only a sliver of congressional offices, but enough to make them one of the most successful insurgent parties in U.S. history. Amid the heated debates of the 1890s, the political system suddenly confronted an economic crisis.

In the South, the only region where Democrats gained strength in the 1890s, the People’s Party lost ground for distinctive reasons. After the end of Reconstruction, African Americans in most states had continued to vote in significant numbers. As long as Democrats competed for black votes, the possibility remained that other parties could win them away. Populists proposed new measures to help farmers and wage earners — an attractive message for poverty-stricken people of both races. Some white Populists went out of their way to build cross-racial ties. “The accident of color can make no difference in the interest of farmers, croppers, and laborers,” argued Georgia Populist Tom Watson. “You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings.”

Such appeals threatened the foundations of southern politics. Democrats struck back, calling themselves the “white man’s party” and denouncing Populists for advocating “Negro rule.” Their arguments persuaded some voters to return to the Democratic camp. From Georgia to Texas, other poor white farmers, tenants, and wage earners ignored such appeals and continued to support the Populists in large numbers. Democrats found they could put down the Populist threat only through fraud and violence. After using such tactics, Pitchfork Ben Tillman of South Carolina openly bragged that he and his allies had “done our level best” to block “every last” vote against the Democrats, especially those cast by African Americans. “We stuffed ballot boxes,” he said in 1900. “We shot them. We are not ashamed of it.” “We had to do it,” a Georgia Democrat later argued. “Those damned Populists would have ruined the country.”

Having suppressed the political revolt, southern Democrats looked for new ways to enforce white supremacy. In 1890, a constitutional convention in Mississippi had adopted a key innovation: an “understanding clause” that required would-be voters to interpret parts of the state constitution, with local Democratic officials deciding who met the standard. After the Populist uprising — and after Republicans ceased their attempts to protect voting rights — such measures spread to other southern states. Louisiana’s grandfather clause, which denied the ballot to any man whose grandfather had been unable to vote in slavery days, was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. But in Williams v. Mississippi (1898), the Court allowed poll taxes and literacy tests to stand. By 1908, every southern state had adopted such measures to suppress African American voting — and exclude some poor whites from the polls as well.

The impact of disfranchisement can hardly be overstated (Map 19.3). Across the South, voter turnout plunged, from above 70 percent to 34 percent or even lower. Not only blacks but also many poor whites ceased to vote. Since Democrats faced virtually no opposition, action shifted to the “white primaries,” where Democratic candidates competed for nominations. Some former Populists joined the Democrats in openly advocating white supremacy. The racial climate hardened. Segregation laws proliferated. Lynching of African Americans increasingly occurred in broad daylight, with crowds of thousands gathered to watch.

The convict lease system, which had begun to take hold during Reconstruction, also expanded. Blacks received harsh sentences for crimes such as “vagrancy,” often when they were traveling to find work or if they could not produce a current employment contract. By the 1890s, Alabama depended on convict leasing for 6 percent of its total state revenue. Prisoners were overwhelmingly black: a 1908 report showed that almost 90 percent of Georgia’s leased convicts were African Americans. Calling attention to the torture and deaths of prisoners, as well as the damaging economic effect of their unpaid labor, reformers, labor unions, and Populists protested the situation strenuously. But “reforms” simply replaced convict leasing with the chain gang, in which prisoners worked directly for the state on roadbuilding and other projects, under equally cruel conditions. All these developments depended on a political Solid South in which Democrats exercised almost complete control.

The impact of the 1890s counterrevolution was dramatically illustrated in Grimes County, a cotton-growing area in east Texas where blacks comprised more than half of the population. African American voters kept the local Republican Party going after Reconstruction and regularly sent black representatives to the Texas legislature. Many local white Populists dismissed Democrats’ taunts of “negro supremacy,” and a Populist-Republican coalition swept the county elections in 1896 and 1898. But after their 1898 defeat, Democrats in Grimes County organized a secret brotherhood and forcibly prevented African Americans from voting in town elections, shooting two in cold blood. The Populist sheriff proved unable to bring the murderers to justice. Reconstituted in 1900 as the White Man’s Party, Democrats carried Grimes County by an overwhelming margin. Gunmen then laid siege to the Populist sheriff’s office, killed his brother and a friend, and drove the wounded sheriff out of the county. The White Man’s Party ruled Grimes County for the next fifty years.

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