People's Party:  South
(also see specific states and African-American chapter) 

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Bryan, Ferald Joseph. "Thomas E. Watson Versus Henry W. Grady: The Rhetorical Struggle for the Mind of the South, 1880-1890." Ph.D. dissertation (Speech Communication), University of Missouri - Columbia, 1985.  DAI, 47, no. 02A, (1985): 0344.  Watson and Grady presented two divergent visions for the economic future of the South.  Grady called for diversification of southern agriculture, financial dependency on northern investors, and political unity among middle-class whites in unquestioning support of the Democratic Party.  Watson asked poor farmers to stay economically independent on the farm and join in political unity with poor blacks against the political and economic stranglehold of northern bankers and political leaders.  Watson's Populist metaphors offered hope to those poor black and white farmers ignored by the New South mentality. 

Degler, Carl N. The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth century. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. 

Denton, William Henry. "The Impact of Populism Upon the Southern Educational Awakening" Ph.D. Dissertation (Education), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1965.  

DeSantis, Vincent P. Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877-1897. 275 p., maps. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Series 77 No. 1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins P, 1959.  Good on Populists, Republicans and Fusion in the South.  

Grantham, Dewey W., Jr. "The One-Party South." Current History 1957 32(189): 261-266.  The chief architects of the "New South" were the "Redeemers" (or "Bourbons") who rescued it from radical Republican rule.  Populists, disfranchisers, demagogues, and social conservatives of the present day also placed their stamp on the current political structure of the South.  America: History and Life, 0:3931

Grantham, Dewey. "Conceptualizing the History of Modern Southern Politics." History Teacher 1983 17(1): 9-32.  The political culture of the modern South has developed in three stages. Flux and instability from 1865 to 1900, in the aftermath of the Populist upheaval of the 1890s, the one-party Solid South emerged, and the devolution from the Solid South after 1948.  America: History and Life, 21A:7315

Harvey, Paul. "Southern Baptists and the Social Gospel: White Religious Progressivism in the South, 1900-1925." Fides et Historia 1995 27(2): 59-77.  Those who advocated a public role for religious people and their institutions in reforming and regulating human institutions found poor soil among Southern Baptists in the early 20th century.  The movement was essentially Northern and urban.  The small successes that reformers had were generally outside the traditional denominations and often allied to progressive or populist political movements that considered religion marginal or even a hindrance to progress.  America: History and Life, 34:7185

Hyman, Michael R. The Anti-Redeemers: Hill-Country Political Dissenters in the Lower South from Redemption to Populism. Baton Rouge and London: LSU Press, 1990.  Anti-Redeemers agitated railroad regulation, tax reform, and a larger role for government.  The political dissidents of 1870s and 1880s influenced and helped shape Populists' agenda. Derived from "Response to Redeemer Rule: Hill Country Political Dissent in the Post-Reconstruction South." 388 p. Ph.D. dissertation, CUNY, 1986.  DAI 1986 47(4):1460-A. DA8614682. 

Jeffrey, Julie Roy. "Women in the Southern Farmers' Alliance: A Reconsideration of the Role and Status of Women in the Late Nineteenth Century South." Feminist Studies 1975 3(1/2): 72-91.  The activities of the Southern Farmers' Alliance in North Carolina illustrate the organization's general attitude toward women.  The Alliance rejected the traditional female stereotype of pale fragile gentility and encouraged female participation in its affairs, and proposed education and economic equality for women.  Women's goals, however, existed within the framework of renewing southern agriculture.  Although the Alliance enlarged the traditional view of women, encouraged education and participation, it did not go further toward female equality outside farm life.  America: History and Life, 15A:2350

Kendrick, Benjamin B. "Agrarian Discontent in the South: 1880-1900." Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1920. pp. 267-72. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1925.  Suggests need for further research along this line.  Lists causes of Southern discontent as low social status in 1890 (as compared to 1860) and lien law system, which was unique to southern agriculture.  

Kousser, J. Morgan. The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restrictions and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910. New Haven: Yale UP, 1974.  Disfranchisement was intended by political elites to eliminate Populists (both black and white) and Populist-like movements, rather than just eliminate blacks. 

Lipartito, Kenneth J. "The New York Cotton Exchange and the Development of the Cotton Futures Market." Business History Review 1983 57(1): 50-72.  The principal cotton merchants of New York City established the New York Cotton Exchange in 1871.  During the 1890's criticism of futures trading swelled in the midst of the Populist protest of the era, but after the turn of the century criticism faded.  America: History and Life, 21A:4912

McMath, Robert C., Jr. Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1975. 221 pp. The Alliance thrived best in unsettled frontier-like conditions which encouraged new forms of social organization.  The Alliance was like a church, fulfilling religious functions such as integration of the individual with neighbors, interpretation of events, and reinforcement of group values. 

Olzak, Susan. "The Political Context of Competition: Lynching and Urban Racial Violence, 1882-1914." Social Forces 1990 69(2): 395-421.  Economic slumps that affected the least-skilled workers increased rates of both lynching and urban racial violence, as did rising competition from immigration.  The Populist challenge to one-party rule and the changing fortunes of the cotton economy increased the incidence of lynchings. America: History and Life, 29:12682

Palmer, Bruce. "Man Over Money': The Southern Populist Critique of American Populism. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1980.  Southern Populists launched a strong rhetorical against the capitalist system even though they believed in the benefits of private property and the market economy.   

_____. "The Roots of Reform: Southern Populists and their Southern History." Red River Valley Historical Review 1979 4(2): 33-62.  The southern Populists' view of the history of the South was quite different from the mainstream version.  America: History and Life, 17A:5384

_____. "Southern Populists Remember: The Reform Alternative to Southern Sectionalism." Southern Studies 1978 17(2): 131-149.  Southern Populists of the late 19th century looked upon the antebellum South with neither nostalgia for the Old South nor admiration for the industrialization of the New South. They were hostile to any form of aristocracy, opposed sectionalism, were antimonopoly and pro-Greenback, and were concerned with the effects of black slavery on white labor. They viewed the Civil War as necessary to destroy slavery and criticized their own period of the 1890's for enslaving blacks and whites in the new industrialization.   America: History and Life, 16A:7750

Paul, Brad Alan. "Rebels of the New South: The Socialist Party in Dixie, 1892--1920." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1999.  DAI, 60, no. 11A (1999).  Socialist Party activity in the American South was anchored in the remnants of populism and fueled by socialist organizing efforts.  

Peal, David. "The Politics of Populism: Germany and the American South in the 1890s." Comparative Studies in Society and History 1989 31(2): 340-362.  A comparison of the first anti-Semitic movement in the German Reichstag of the 1890's with Populism in the American South.  Both movements mobilized small farmers on the margins of political and economic life and produced charismatic leaders skillful in mobilizing popular grievances.  Anti-Semitism and Racism pervaded both movements and was their principal legacy.  America: History and Life, 27:14021

Raybon, S. Paul. "Stick By the Old Paths: An Inquiry into the Southern Baptist Response to Populism." American Baptist Quarterly 1992 11(3): 231-245.  Baptist ministers in the South rejected Populism and the Social Gospel. Sermons and Baptist newspapers insisted that the cure to the problem was hard work. America: History and Life, 31:3132 

Schlup, Leonard. "Democrats, Populists and Gilded Age Politics." Manuscripts 1998 50(1): 27-40. Democrats of the Gilded Age South were greatly concerned by the popularity of the Populist Party and the intransigence of Republicans.  America: History and Life, 37:873

Schlup, Leonard. "Adlai E. Stevenson and Southern Politics in 1892." Mississippi Quarterly 1993-94 47(1): 58-78.  Adlai E. Stevenson (1835-1914), grandfather of Adlai E. Stevenson II, played an important role as the vice-presidential candidate in the election of 1892 by helping the Democrats fight off the Populist challenge. America: History and Life, 32:15287 

Simms, L. Moody, Jr. "A Note on Sidney Lanier's Attitude Toward the Negro and Toward Populism." Georgia Historical Quarterly 1968 52(3): 305-307.  Traces the Southern Populist attitude toward the Negro to an essay by Sidney Lanier entitled "The New South." Published in 1880, this essay advocated that the political unity of the small farmers of the South, black and white alike, was more important than maintaining the tradition of racial antagonism. By the 1890's, Southern Populists, especially Tom Watson, successfully promoted these same ideas. America: History and Life, 6:1159

Tindall, George B. The Persistent Tradition in Southern Politics. (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History). Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1975. 71 pp. Bourbons provided the thesis, Populists the antithesis.  Progressives worked out the synthesis by adopting Populist ideas of active government, but were conservative enough to be legitimate heirs to Bourbonism. 

_____."Southern Strategy: A Historical Perspective," North Carolina Historical Review. 48(2):126-141. Spring 1971.  

Williams, T. Harry. "Huey, Lyndon, and Southern Radicalism." Journal of American History. 60(2):267-93. 1973.  Products of non-affluent families from radical areas.  Strove for economic equality for whites, both would also extend to blacks.  Ed. Note: LBJ's grandfather helped found the People's Party in Texas.   

_____. Romance and Realism in Southern Politics. 84 p. Lamar Memorial Lectures, 1960. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1961.  "The Politics of Populism and Progressivism," pp. 44-84.  

Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South. 451 p. Baton Rouge: LSU P, 1951. Excellent account of southern Populism, and indispensable bibliography.   

_____. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York; Oxford UP, 1974. 

_____. The Burden of Southern History. 250 p. Revised edition, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U P, 1968.  See particularly, "The Populist Heritage and the Intellectuals."