1886
The Colored Farmers Alliance is established in Houston County, Texas,
on December 11, 1886. The black organization's highest post, General
Superintendent, is assumed by
R.M.
Humphrey (photo left). (See Floyd Miller, "Black Protest and White
Leadership: A Note on the Colored Farmers Alliance," Phylon, Vol 23,
1972, p.170) Cleburne Demands. In the Summer in Cleburne, near Dallas, the Farmers Alliance draws up what later comes to be known as the "Cleburne Demands" - the first document of the Populist movement, proposing regulation of railroad rates, heavy taxation of land held only for speculative purposes, and an increase in the money supply. They call for a national conference of all labor organizations
Karl Marx's Das Kapital is first published in English. Andrew Carnegie writes Triumphant Democracy.
The Haymarket Massacre in Chicago.
The Carrollton Massacre. On March 17, 20 African-Americans are massacred at Carrollton, Mississippi.
Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) (photo right) becomes president of the
newly founded American Federation of Labor (AFL) on December 8. All major
unions of the day excluded black Americans. At least 74 African-Americans are lynched in 1886.
The Agricultural Wheel absorbs another farm group, the Brothers of Freedom.
1887
At least 70 African-Americans are known to have been lynched in 1887.
1888
The Southern and Northern Alliances meet to discuss a merger of the
two groups. The Northern Alliance objects to the merger due to the exclusion
of black farmers by the Southern Alliance. The Southern Alliance offers to
strike the word "white" from their qualifications for membership, leaving to
each state organization the right to prescribe the eligibility of black
farmers within its jurisdiction. The Southerners specifically want to keep
black people out of the national legislative body, the Supreme Council.
Negotiations break down and end immediate prospects of a union between the
two alliances. (See Hicks, The Populist Revolt, pp. 119-121) List of grievences of black voters. A convention of African-American leaders in Georgia spell out a list of grievences reflecting the views of black voters. They attack the chain gang and convict lease systems, lynch law, and the spreading practice of segregation. They deplore the barring of blacks from jury duty and inadequate appropriations for black education. Finally, they denounce ballot-tampering, urging a free ballot and a fair count, and they call for black representation in the legislature. (See Aptheker ed., Documentary History, II, pp.697-703)
Republican Benjamin Harrison (photo right) is elected U.S. president
on November 6. Two of the first African-American banks. Two of America's first black-owned banks -- the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of the Reformers, in Richmond Virginia, and Capital Savings Bank of Washington, DC, opened their doors.
At least sixty-nine African-Americans are lynched in 1888.
1889
Corn, which bought 45 cents a bushel in 1870, is now being bought for only 10 cents a bushel. Farmers have to pay a bushel of corn in freight costs for every bushel shipped out. Additionally, farmers have to pay exorbitant prices demanded by the grain elevators at the terminals.
Harvesting wheat requires a machine to bind wheat before it becomes too dry,
which costs several hundred dollars. Farmers have to buy this on credit,
knowing that $200 will be twice as hard to get in a few years. (Photo of an
African-American farmers' son in North Carolina) In the South the situation is worse then anywhere -- 90 percent of farmers are living on credit.
At least 94 African-Americans are lynched in 1889.
1890
The People's Party is formed at a national convention in Topeka, Kansas. The base of the party are debt-ridden small farmers in cotton-growing regions of the South and wheat-growing areas of the Great Plains, many of whom were members of the Farmers Alliance dating back to 1877.
Sitting Bull (photo left), the great Sioux chief, is killed just
weeks before the massacre at Wounded Knee. On a cold winter day, U.S.
army soldiers attack a Sioux/Cheyenne camp at Wounded Knee, South Dakota,
killing three hundred men, women, and children --ending the Ghost Dance
War. The Lodge Federal Election Bill (know to opponents as "The Force Bill"), designed to protect black voting rights through federal supervision of congressional elections, passes the House but later gets defeated in the Senate.
African-Americans are being disenfranchised throughout the South. The Mississippi Plan, approved on November 1, uses literacy and "understanding" tests to disenfranchise black American citizens. Similar statutes are adopted by South Carolina (1895), Louisiana (1898), North Carolina (1900), Alabama (1901), Virginia (1901), Georgia (1908), and Oklahoma (1910).
Census of 1890. U.S. population: 62,947,714
Black population: 7,488,676 (11.9%)
The Afro-American League. On January 25, under the leadership of Timothy Thomas Fortune, the militant National Afro-American League is founded in Chicago.
Populist "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman is elected governor of South Carolina. He called his election "a triumph of ... white supremacy."
At least 85 African-Americans are lynched in 1890.
Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act.
1891
The Texas People's Party is founded in Dallas. It is an interracial, radical gathering, with debate among white and black founders. A black delegate, active in the Knights of Labor, questions the statements of "equality" at the meeting, pointing to segregation on passanger cars and the exclusion of African-Americans from juries.
Two African-Americans are elected to the Texas Executive Committee of the Texas People's Party. (See Howard Zinn, A People's History, 1980, p. 284)
N.A. Dunning (photo right), Associate Editor of the National
Economist, the national organ of the Farmers Alliance, and author of
The Philosophy of Price and The History of the United States Dollars
edits The Farmers Alliance History and Agricultural Digest (The
Alliance Publishing Co., Washington D.C., 1891). A chapter of the book is
written by R. M. Humphrey on the history of the Colored Farmers Alliance.
The Colored Farmers Alliance claims a membership of 1.25 million among a dozen state organizations. The Colored Farmers Alliance is described as "the first black organization [in the United States] with a mass following." (See Miller, Phylon, p. 172; Abromowitz, "The Negro in the Populist Movement,"The Journal of Negro History)
Black cotton pickers strike. The Colored Farmers Alliance plan a
strike of black cotton pickers which is carried out in selected parts of the
South. Circulars are mailed out demanding an increase in the wage rate to
$1.00 per hundred pounds, and setting a date for the strike. (See Aptheker
ed., Documentary History, II, p.810)
The president of the Southern Alliance, Colonel Leonidas L. Polk (photo right) of North Carolina, attempts to squelch the strike by advising white farmers to leave their cotton in the fields rather than pay more than fifty cents per hundred to have it picked. Polk charges that the black farmers are attempting "to better their condition at the expense of their white bretheren. Reforms should not be made in the interest of one portion of our farmers at the expense of another." (See C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 219)
In Arkansas, a thirty-year-old black cotton picker named Ben Patterson led the strike, traveling from plantation to plantation to get support, his band growing, engaging in gun battles with a white posse. A plantation manager is killed, a cotton gin burned. Patterson and his band are caught, and fifteen of them are shot to death.
Begining of wireless telegraphy.
At least 113 African-Americans are lynched in 1891.
1892
Farmer lecturers fan out to forty-three states and reach 2 million farm families. Goodwyn calls this "the most massive organizing drive by any citizen institution of nineteenth century America." It was a drive based on the idea of cooperation, of farmers creating their own culture, and their own political parties.
A platform is drawn up at the People's Party convention in St. Louis, Missouri (See 1892 Preamble to the Populist Platform by Ignatius Donnelly -- a former Lieutenant Governor, Congressman, and Lincoln Republican from Minnesota who became a Granger and then Populist). General James B. Weaver of Iowa is chosen as the People's Party candidate for president in July at the nominating convention in Omaha, Nebraska. A former Democrat and Free-Soiler, born during the days of Andrew Jackson's battle with the U.S. Bank, a general in the Union army, Weaver drifted into the Greenback movement after a short spell as a Republican and from there to Populism. (See Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, 1955, p. 63)
There are at least two black delegates to third-party conventions in Georgia. (See Howard Zinn, A People's History, 1980, p. 284)
Iron and steelworkers strike in U.S.
The People's Party actively pursues the black vote. It is estimated that more African-Americans voted in this election since Reconstruction. (See Wilhoit, "Populism's Impact on the Georgia Negro," pp.119-122)
The Populists win the election in North Carolina. According to the Populists, the Democratic Party stole 40,000 votes during this election. (See Joseph Gregoire De Roulhac Hamilton, North Carolina Since 1860, Chicago, 1919, p. 248-249)
At least 161 African-Americans are lynched in 1892.
Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland is elected again as U.S. President (first term 1884-1888).
1893
At least 118 African-Americans are lynched in 1893. Henry Ford builds his first car.
"Panic of 1893"
1894
There were twenty-four black delegates to a third-party convention in Georgia. (See Howard Zinn, A People's History, 1980, p. 284)
The Arkansas People's Party platform speaks of the "downtrodden, regardless of race." (See Howard Zinn, A People's History, 1980, p.284)
At least 134 African-Americans are lynched in 1894.
Coxey's Army of the unemployed march in protest.
The Pulman Strike in Chicago, brought about by wage reductions, is led by Socialist Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926), who was sympathetic toward Populist doctrines and campaigned for the Democratic-Populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in 1896. The Pullman Company strike caused a national transportation crisis. African-Americans are hired by the company as strike-breakers.
1895
Frederick
Douglass dies. Born in 1817 as a slave in Tuckahoe, Maryland,
Douglas frees himself and becomes the most famous Abolitionist. In 1838 he
escaped from a Baltimore shipyard and settled in Massachusetts, where he
became an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He lectured on
slavery in Great Britain and Ireland from 1845-1847, where 150 pounds
sterling was collected to buy his freedom. He held various public offices
and was U.S. minister to Haiti in 1889. He wrote Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass (1845) and Life and Times (1881). Booker T. Washington delivers his "Atlanta Compromise" speech on September 18 at the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition. He says the "Negro problem" would be solved by a policy of gradualism and accommodation. He asserts that vocational education, which gives black people an opportunity for economic security, is more valuable than social advantages or political office. In one sentence he summarizes his concept: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."
A race riot. Whites attack black workers in New Orleans on March 11-12. Six African-Americans are killed.
The National Baptist Convention. Several Baptist organizations
combined to form the National Baptist Convention of the U.S.A.; the Baptist
church is the largest black religious denomination in the United States. At least 113 African-Americans are lynched in 1895.
1896
A young W.E.B.
Du Bois, states: ”I began now to believe [populism] ... a third
party movement of deep significance.”African-American delegates oppose fusion with the Democratic Party at the national Populist convention fearing it will result in the triumph of the Democratic Party and accelerate the process of disfranchisement occurring in the South. (See Abromowitz "The Negro in the Populist Movement," p.287-288).
Black delegates argue that Populism should continue as an independent movement. However their statements are in vain and the majority of white Populists hand over their organizational independence to the Democrats (viz the leadership of the People's Party commit suicide on behalf of the Populist movement).
William Jennings Bryan is nominated for president by the Populist-Democratic Party fusion. His "Cross of Gold" speech delivered at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago focuses on the issue of currency, never once mentioning the role of African-Americans.
Plessy v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court decides on May 18 in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities satisfy Fourteenth Amendment guarantees, giving legal sanction to Jim Crow segregation laws.
Black women organize. The National Association of Colored Women is formed on July 21; Mary Church Terrell is chosen president.
George Washington Carver. George Washington Carver is appointed director of agricultural research at Tuskegee Institute. His work advances peanut, sweet potato, and soybean farming.
Atleast 78 African-Americans are lynched in 1896.
Republican candidate William McKinley is elected U.S. President.
1897
At least 123 African-Americans are lynched in 1897.
1898
The National Afro-American Council meets in Washington, D.C., to consider the status of the race. Founded on September 15, the National Afro-American Council elects Bishop Alexander Walters as its first president.
A race riot. On November 10, in Wilmington, North Carolina, eight black Americans were killed during white rioting.
Black-owned insurance companies. The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Insurance Company and the National Benefit Life Insurance Company of Washington, DC are established.
Lynchings. 101 black Americans are known to have been lynched in 1898.
1899
Segregation of public transportation is legalized in North Carolina.
Daniel A. P. Murray (1852-1925), an African-American librarian at the
Library of Congress, is asked to compile a collection of books and pamphlets
by black authors for an exhibition of "Negro Authors" at the 1900 Paris
Exposition. Lynching protest. The Afro-American Council designated June 4 as a national day of fasting to protest lynchings and massacres.