Black Populist Handicaps Texas Election

THE SOUTHERN MERCURY, The Colored Brother: A Spicy Letter from J. B. Rayner (1895)

African American support for the Republican Party waned in the late 1870s when many whites in the party wearied of Reconstruction. Led by Redeemers, southern Democrats used legitimate as well as illegal and violent means to destroy black political power. The only alternative for African Americans emerged in the local and regional Farmers’ Alliances and Granger movement, which culminated in populism. Many African Americans joined the People’s Party, posing a direct threat to Democrats’ electoral prospects. Here, The Southern Mercury newspaper transcribes a speech by John B. Rayner, a black political activist from Texas and organizer of “colored Populist clubs,” promoting the People’s Party.

He Briefly Reviews the Five Parties That Will be in the Field Next Year and Pays His Respects to Each One of Them

“I am glad the time has come when the monster breath demagogues will have to quit talking about ‘social equality,’ ‘negro supremacy’ and the ‘solid south.’ ‘Social equality’ and ‘negro supremacy’ are slang phrases and were once powerful weapons in the hand of southern democracy to destroy carpetbagism. Since this tenebreous and blighting influence is gone, never to return, let the democrats quit using these slang phrases and take up the wand of southern prosperity and strike the soil until exploitation shall make the valley fruitful and the hills ring with spindles and flying shuttles and the roll of mighty machinery shall bless and make glad the human family.

There will be five distinct parties in the next campaign, viz: Lily White republicans, Cuney republicans,1 renegade or silver democrats, democrats pure and simple and the people’s party.

Let us examine each of these parties and see what their tactics will be to capture negro votes, etc. The Lily White republicans are that class of white republicans who would not endure negro domination in republican conventions. Those men did not quit the old republican organization because they were jealous of or hated my race (the negroes), but they quit because my race sent too many incompetent and ignorant delegates to republican conventions, thus making the deliberation in these conventions ridiculous. The orators in this party will not speak for negro votes, but will strive to capture the business men of Texas, and they will gloriously succeed, for the business men of the south are sick and tired of democratic legislation.

The orators in this party, to capture white votes, will appeal to complexional prejudices, blue veins, straight hair and business sentiments.

The Cuney republicans are 95 per cent negroes and 5 per cent whites. The negroes in this party are hotel flunkies, barbers, dude school teachers, ignorant preachers, saloon waiters, etc. The whites in this party are the mephitic vaporings from a cadaverous carpetbagism. The men in this party are the sordid mercenaries in politics, and they will make a republican ticket if the renegade or silver democrats will pay them to do so, and this will be done just to keep the negroes from voting the people’s party ticket.

Those men nominated a republican ticket in the last campaign, but, for pelf, they elected Culberson for governor and one Pendleton from Bell county to congress.

The silver democrats are the chronic office-seekers, and have no political conscience or principle; they will accept any platform to get a democratic nomination, and then jeer and ignore it to get elected. The leaders in this party are populists in faith, but are too cowardly to confess it.

The sooner the leaders in this party and their individious practice goes to pluto’s laboratory for the purpose of studying the science of pyrology tentatively or somatically, the better it will be for the south.

The leaders in this party are only three men, and they would eat the golden calf that Aaron made,2 and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar set up in the plain of Dura,3 to get a democratic nomination, and then pick up the thirty pieces of silver that their antetype Judas Iscariot cast away,4 for the purpose of buying mean whisky and cigars to treat the delegates that gave them the nomination, and then steal the people’s party silver plank to get elected.

In their next convention this party will write a boustrophidon5 platform and fill it with platitudes and ambiguous terms, and, to mislead the people, they will resort to the political sin, esoter[i]cism. This party in their next election will use bribes, deception and shotgun intimidation to capture negro votes.

The democratic party, pure and simple, is headed by Hon. George Clark of Waco, and is made up of men, the sons of southern chivalry, and they belong to the patriarchal order of southern knighthood.…

The leaders of this party have the cool, calculating intellect of a Robert E. Lee, the boldness of a Stonewall Jackson and the stubbornness of a Roman soldier, and behind this party is unlimited wealth and the influence of Cleveland’s administration. This party will make a platform that will not antagonize the democratic national platform; in fact, this is true blue democracy, and I admire their boldness and determination, because if they get in office, they expect to do so by standing on their platform.

The protagonist in this party is to President Cleveland as Nicolo Machiavelli was to Lorenzo de Medici, and President Cleveland is to our American financial system as Benedict Arnold was to West Point.

This party will make no effort to capture the negro voters, but will aim to capture the white republicans of the Cuney type.

The next is the people’s party, God’s viceregent in politics, and this party is made up of the middle class or yeomanry of the country.”

Then follows Mr. Rayner’s appeal to the negroes to vote with the people’s party. He says the republican party in the south is broken down and worn out.

“The only rights we negroes will ever enjoy will be the right the southern white man gives us. Vote the people’s party ticket; we will get better wages for our work and we will have better times in the south.”

Milton Park, ed., The Southern Mercury (Dallas, TX), vol. 14, no. 50, ed. 1, Thursday, December 12, 1895, Newspaper, December 12, 1895; digital images (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185637/), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries, Denton, Texas.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS