Populists, Progressives, and the Reaction

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Populists, Progressives, and the Reaction
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Course Theme

• Which is more important in southern politics?
• Race or Economics?
• Or is it somewhere in between
• We will see this again when we talk about post
  World War II rise of the Republican Party

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Why Disfranchisement?

• White fear that African-American votes will
  matter or put them back in control.
• Fear of coalitions of blacks, Populists,
  Republicans
• Effect is to remove blacks and many whites from
  the electorate

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The Populists

• Farmers Alliances in the 1890s
• Sometimes a Populist-Republican or Populist alone
  coalition
• Black alliance threatens Democratic rule
• Blacks sometimes can cast deciding votes
• This is unacceptable to whites

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Farmers and Populists

• Farmers Alliance strong in South and Midwest -
  some states more than others
• Starts as educational organization
• Becomes political as farmers suffer economic
  hardships
• Farmers Alliance is segregated but works together
  to improve conditions

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Populist platform

• Oversimplifying - but
• For abolishing national banks, creating a
  subtreasury system for federal loans
• For the income tax
• For direct election of U. S. Senators
• Railroad regulation
• Anti-corruption, Anti-monopoly

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Leading Southern Populists

• Tom Watson of Georgia
• Democrat turned Populist, VP nominee in 1896
• Becomes racial demagogue later

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Populists collapse

• Populists were especially strong in Texas,
  Georgia, and North Carolina - where they joined
  with Republicans to control the state briefly
• Democrats co-opted many of their issues
• Violence, fraud suppressed them
• With Populists defeated, South becomes a
  one-party region

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Southern Progressivism

• Theres a lot to reform in the South!
• Progressivism is an urban middle-class
  professional movement
• One goal is reformist - dealing with political
  corruption
• Another is to try to solve problems of an
  industrial society
• In the south, progressives are segregationists
  and moral reformers

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Reactions to alcohol

• http//blogs.wofford.edu/from_the_archives/2011/03
  /28/spartanburg-and-blind-tigers/

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Southern Textiles

• Becomes the principal Southern industry, at least
  in the Piedmont
• Starts with local capital, but quickly attracts
  outside support
• Lots of unskilled and semi-skilled labor
• Problems of an industrial work force

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Textile Politics

• SCs Cole Blease
• Erratic, demagogic
• Governor, 1911-15

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Return of the South to power

• Nationally, that is
• Woodrow Wilson has southern roots
• 1912 election puts many southern Democrats into
  influential positions in Congress
• Half of Wilsons cabinet members are from the
  South

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Wilsons agenda

• 1913-14 is the high-water mark of Progressivism
  at the federal level
• South generally supports Wilson
• Wilson segregates Washington, removes many blacks
  from federal jobs
• In the end, 1920 Republican landslide puts
  Democrats and South back out of power

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1920s

• South remains in an agricultural depression
• South is at the core of the Democratic Party
• When the Democrats nominate Al Smith in 1928, a
  Catholic and a wet - Republicans carry some
  parts of the South for the first time in decades
• Democrats have strong sectional wings

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• Rebecca Latimer Felton, of Georgia