Black Populism - Goals

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 then left-of-centre Republican Party in fusion campaigns. (Today though, after the Republican Party moved to the right, and the Democratic Party in the South was abandoned by the White Populist Dixiecrats who had opposed integration in the 1960s, most African Americans who vote cast ballots for Democratic Party candidates).

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