The Populists emerged from farmers’ alliances, both white and black. With the formation of Colored Farmers’ Alliances, African Americans joined the alliance movement, primarily across the South. In the following excerpt from a letter written to a newspaper in Jacksonville, Florida, the Reverend J. L. Moore, the superintendent of the Colored Farmers’ Alliance in Putnam County, Florida, discussed his views on the role of African Americans in party politics.
In all the discussions of the whites in all the various meetings they attend and the different resolutions, remarks, and speeches they make against the Negro, I never hear you, Mr. Editor, nor any of the other leading journals, once criticize their action and say they are antagonizing the races, neither do you ever call a halt. But let the Negro speak once, and what do you hear? Antagonizing races, Negro uprising, Negro domination, etc. Anything to keep the reading public hostile toward the Negro, not allowing him the privilege to speak his opinion, and if that opinion be wrong show him by argument, and not at once make it a race issue . . . as members of the Colored Farmers’ Alliance we avowed that we were going to vote with and for the man or party that will secure for the farmer or laboring man his just rights and privileges, and in order that he may enjoy them without experiencing a burden.
We want protection at the ballot box, so that the laboring man may have an equal showing, and the various labor organizations to secure their just rights, we will join hand with them irrespective of party, “and those fellows will have to walk.” We are aware of the fact that the laboring colored man’s interests and the laboring white man’s interests are one and the same. Especially is this true at the South. Anything that can be brought about to benefit the workingman, will also benefit the Negro more than any other legislation that can be enacted. . . . So I for one have fully decided to vote with and work for that party, or those who favor the workingman, let them belong to the Democratic, or Republican, or the People’s Party. I know I speak the sentiment of that convention, representing as we do one-fifth of the laborers of this country, seven-eighths of our race in this country being engaged in agricultural pursuits. . . .
But, Mr. Editor, can we do anything while the present parties have control of the ballot box, and we (the Alliance) have no protection? The greatest mistake, I see, is this: The wily politicians see and know that they have to do something, therefore they are slipping into the Alliance, and the farmers, in many instances, are accepting them as leaders; and if we are to have the same leaders, we need not expect anything else but the same results. The action of the Alliance in this reminds me of the man who first put his hand in the lion’s mouth and the lion finally bit it off; and then he changed to make the matter better and put his head in the lion’s mouth, and therefore lost his head. Now the farmers and laboring men know in the manner they were standing before they organized; they lost their hands, so to speak; now organized in one body or head, if they give themselves over to the same power that took their hand, it will likewise take their head.
Source: Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, vol. 2, From the Reconstruction to the Founding of the NAACP (New York: Citadel Press, 1951), 808–9.