Striking a Blow: The Colored Farmer’s Alliance and the Populist Movement (Feb 11, 2025)

by Scott Sosebee

The United States, in the first few decades after the Civil War, underwent a great transformation, moving from an almost wholly agricultural nation to one that became one of the world’s most dominant industrial giants. At the same time—and in many ways related to the overarching transformation—the nation’s urban population exploded, it laid thousands of miles of railroad track throughout the nation, enjoyed an extraordinary record of technological achievement, and created what was well on its way to being the wealthiest nation in the world. However, despite the unprecedented growth, the period did not craft full harmony among its citizenry. Rapid and great development constructs a dynamic society, but it also often formulates great tension. That was certainly the case in the late nineteenth century United States. Friction grew largely because the wealth, power, and upward economic mobility the new reality formed was not evenly distributed. Millions of Americans were left out of this newfound prosperity. Industrial workers certainly were, but the population spread among the nation’s rural regions felt the pain of isolation from advancement just as acutely if not more so.

The new-found wealth and development in the U.S. during that period was also not geographically distributed. The northeast and the upper Midwest—the location of the nation’s large cities and exploding immigrant population that manned the factories—inordinately received the benefit of growth. While other regions did not advance as quickly and in the proportion that those regions did, the American South not only saw the least amount of growth, in real terms it fell further behind the economic prosperity of the rest of the nation. The South certainly contained wealth, but it was concentrated in even fewer hands than the affluence of other regions. The majority of southerners—by the end of the 1870s—toiled on land that they did not own and saw no chance to escape their station. What they saw was a system that was “stacked against” them, one that not only offered no escape but actively worked to keep them landless and almost penniless. Against such a backdrop, many of those rural residents began to organize what may have begun as an attempt to find economic advancement but eventually coalesced into what will become known as the Populist movement, not only the greatest third party crusade in the nation’s history, but also the genesis of political and social reform that would come to shape many of the political ideas and philosophies that are still debated today.

The origins of the Populist movement are varied, and many different organizing efforts took place independently and simultaneously. However, one of the most foundational efforts that became Populism began in Texas and spread throughout the South. The Farmers’ Alliance, which began in Lampasas in 1877, would eventually grow to be the most widespread of the various agrarian movements in the 1870s and 1880s and would be the foundational entity behind the People’s Party, which would become known as the Populist Party. But the Farmers’ Alliance and its offshoots were first southern organizations and thus was subject to southern prejudices and social norms. That meant that the White organizers of the Farmers’ Alliance banned membership and participation to African American southerners—even though if they had included them their movement very well would have constituted a majority of southerners and could have gathered great political strength.

The exclusion of Black rural southerners from the Alliance—people who suffered from the same privations as did their White counterparts—led a group of Black farmers in 1886 in Houston County, Texas to call a meeting and form the “Colored Farmers’ Alliance (CFA),” a group that, just as the White group had, spread throughout the South. The new group elected J.J. Shuffer as president but made Richard M. Humphrey—who was White—the general superintendent. The practical matters of the time—African Americans were not included in the political and social process—and the need to coordinate with the White Alliance led to Humphrey’s appointment. While that no doubt had a role in stymying some Black voices in the larger movement, African Americans within the CFA made policy and provided direction more than many have credited them for. Humphrey was instrumental in forming other chapters throughout the South. Another group, the National Colored Alliance formed (also in Texas) led by Andrew Carothers, but in 1890 the two groups merged and kept the name Colored Farmers’ Alliance. The CFA would eventually publish a newspaper, in Houston, under the banner of the “National Alliance.” It was a publication directed toward Black farmers and not only kept them abreast of political developments but also cutting-edge agricultural techniques.

The CFA was not just a political reform organization. One of its primary functions was to help Black farmers negotiate the vagaries of an agricultural market that was changing and developing into a global entity. They helped establish exchanges at crucial ports that allowed its members to buy needed goods at reduced prices and also initiated a financial pool in which members could obtain mortgages at favorable rates. They formed mutual aid societies that helped members pay for and obtain medical help and also provided a pool to pay for members who were injured and could no longer work. They built schools and even provided scholarship for continued education.

Although a separate organization, the CFA did cooperate occasionally with the Southern Farmers’ Alliance (the eventual body of the group organized in Lampasas), but when it did so it was always in dual campaigns; the southern bi-racial social consensus precluded any cooperative programs that might even suggest racial equality. In the end, it was this barrier that would make the organization less effective. When the CFA called for an action, such as a strike among cotton pickers against landowners who paid pecuniary wages, the White Farmers’ Alliance and other agrarian organizations generally did not support the action and, at times, actively supported White landowner efforts to crush the strikers.

In the end, it was the lack of support from the larger White organizations that led to the Colored Farmers’ Alliance’s decline and eventual demise. When many of the efforts the CFA undertook grew violent—largely due to lack of support among the other White farmers—membership began to deteriorate. Eventually, the Northern and Southern Famers’ Alliances, along with the remaining elements of the Grange and free-silver advocates, would band together and form the Populist Party. However, at the Southern Farmers’ Alliance’s insistence, the Colored Farmers’ Alliance was excluded from the proceedings that formed the Party in Omaha, Nebraska in 1892. The Populist Party would find some success, but it would eventually be coopted by the Democrats and by the end of the nineteenth century it ceased to exist. It may have had a better chance if its southern members had been willing to allow the Black famers to be a larger part of the organization, but racism proved to be a hurdle too high to clear.  

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.