Primary Sources: The American South: Government & Politics

"The issue of race divided the Southern Populist movement. In some ways, it can be seen as uniquely interracial for its time, yet in other respects it was critically limited by racial divisions. Even in the heyday of Populism, not all members of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance were equally committed to the interracial program that some leaders advocated. While white and Colored Farmers’ Alliances joined at times in cooperative purchasing and marketing arrangements, the tension between black and white agrarians remained strong. In the late 1880s, African Americans, who were suspicious of the white Alliance, joined the Knights of Labor. Many southern whites—including members of the Farmers’ Alliance—saw the growth of black locals of the Knights as a serious threat. This 1889 memorandum by white North Carolina plantation owner John Bryan Grimes recorded his efforts to infiltrate a Knights of Labor local that some of his black workers had joined. Although Grimes was himself a Populist, he viewed the Knights as a threat to his interests."

"This digital collection provides comprehensive access to the papers of Thomas E. Watson (1856-1922), a prominent Southern Populist politician, lawyer, and author. Using this digital collection, researchers may search and browse digitized materials from the correspondence and pictures series, or browse digitized materials from all of the series in the collection using the finding aid. "

"This collection consists of oral history audio recordings from 1995-2017 about the life and accomplishments of U.S. Representative Tom Bevill. He served in the Alabama Legislature from 1958-1966 and the U.S. House of Representatives for Alabama's Fourth and Seventh Congressional District from 1967 until his retirement in 1997.

Recordings feature Tom Bevill, his family members, and colleagues. Since the audio recordings do not include off the record conversations by interviewees, the transcript timecodes may not coincide with playback. "

"Just as the question of race divided the Southern Populist movement, so has it divided historians. Some scholars point to the uniquely interracial qualities of the Populist movement, while others emphasize the ways that racial divisions limited the success of southern agrarian radicals. Part of the difficulty in resolving the dispute is the complexity and ambiguity of race relations in Southern Populism. In his famous essay on “The Negro Question in the South,” published in 1892, Tom Watson, a Southern Populist who was elected to the U.S. Congress from Georgia in 1890, made one of the strongest cases for an alliance of black and white farmers. Yet Watson was calling for a strategic political alliance, not a fully integrated society, and his commitment to interracialism did not survive the defeat of the Populist movement. After the turn of the century, Watson led efforts to disfranchise African Americans, publishing demagogic attacks on them as well as on Catholics and Jews."

"Huey Long first came to national attention as governor of Louisiana in 1928 and U.S. Senator in 1930. He ruled Louisiana as a virtual dictator, but he also initiated massive public works programs, improved public education and public health, and even established some restrictions on corporate power in the state. While Long was an early supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, by the fall of 1933 the Long-Roosevelt alliance had ruptured, in part over Long’s growing interest in running for president. In 1934 Long organized his own, alternative political organization, the Share-Our-Wealth Society, through which he advocated a populist program for redistributing wealth through sharply graduated income and inheritance taxes. As his national recognition (and ambitions) grew, he spoke with increasing frequency to national radio audiences. No politician in this era—except Roosevelt himself and Long’s sometime ally, Father Charles Coughlin—used radio as frequently and effectively. In this April 1935 radio address, Long sharply criticized FDR and the New Deal and then sketched out his alternative program." GMU History Matters