Populist Movement Analysis

1638 Words4 Pages

1. 1A. The Populist movement was one of the most interesting political movements of American History, and as such, faced significant challenges. The first was integrating African-Americans into the party. Many southern whites refused to accept them and few African Americans were jumping at the prospect of leaving Lincoln's party. Moreso, they faced attacks from democrats in the south, in the same fashion as the republicans; intimidation of black voters, stuffing ballot boxes, as well as many other dishonest tactics were used to keep them out of office. Next, the populists failed in the way of urban voter appeal. Their platform was either in direct conflict with the urban American’s interests, or made little difference to them. In addition, …show more content…

The turn of the century saw the rise of the southern redeemers. African Americans now faced additional trials and tribulations. First, the reduction of public programs caused a drastic decrease in the availability of education, and hospitals. Second, they drastically increased the ability for the police to arrest who they so chose (vis. African Americans), and commit them to a slavery sentence. Second, working class African Americans were segregated to very few jobs indeed. Third, in this period we see the drastic decrease of African American votership. This is because of laws that targeted them for disenfranchisement, such as literacy tests and poll taxes. This quickly lead to an exclusively white southern government which passed extreme segregation laws. Next, we see the north mostly lose sympathy for the southern black population. Finally, and certainly the most extreme example, we see the lynching of African Americans all across the south. These were mostly said to be caused by the African American raping a white woman, though this is quite suspect in the VAST majority of cases. All in all, this was a hard time for African …show more content…

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, race was an important issue. On the homefront, we saw white power reassert its stranglehold on the south, through the politics of the democrats. These “redeemers”, as they called themselves, attempted to abolish any policy put forth by the republicans during the reconstruction. Taxes, particularly on landed property, were slashed, leading to drastic decreases in public spending. Among the most affected were hospitals and schools. In fact, louisiana became the only state in which literacy among the white population dropped between 1880 and 1900. If the white schools were this bad, imagine the African American schools. This fact is especially important as, in an effort to reduce African American voting, many states instituted literacy requirements for voting. While this, and other voting requirements (poll tax, an understanding of the state constitution and so on), mostly had an effect on African Americans, 80,000 whites also lost their right to vote. However, this in no way lead to a decrease in their representation in D.C., as the Fourteenth amendment requires. This reduced the freedom of ALL americans by increasing the proportional power of those who make decisions for them. Last, in 1893, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could expel any Chinese alien without due process of law. As always, legal creep allowed this to be used to create a law barring anarchists from entering the country. This was later extended to

Open Document