Black populism

Following a collapse of Reconstruction, African Americans created a broad-based freelancer political movement in the South: Black Populism.

Beginnings

Between 1886 as well as 1898 black farmers, sharecroppers, in addition to agrarian laborers organized their communities to combat the rising tide of Jim Crow laws. As Black Populism asserted itself and grew into a regional force, it met fierce resistance from the white planter and office elite that, through the Democratic Party and its affiliated network of courts, militias, sheriffs, and newspapers, maintain tight command of the region. Violence against black Populism was organized through the Ku Klux Klan, among other white terrorist organizations intentional to halt or reverse the conduct of black civil and political rights.