Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: The Policy Legacy of Southern Populism

• In Event: Southern Politics and American Political Development

Abstract

Why did Southern US states vary in their levels of redistribution and public goods provision in the early 20th century? Any variation is surprising given that these states shared similar political economies, racialized barriers to political participation, repression of social movements, and single-party politics. I argue that the divergence in the overall amount of redistribution and public goods provision between these states is rooted in two decades of multi-party competition and social movement mobilization that preceded the imposition of subnational authoritarian regimes under Jim Crow. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Populists – both the Farmers’ Alliance and later, the People’s Party -- organized white farmers and farmworkers into a movement to improve their material conditions. In doing so, the Populists were able to contest and shape the founding moments of these subnational authoritarian polities in two ways. In different Deep South states, the Populists exercised varying levels of influence on the Jim Crow constitutional conventions held between 1890-1901 that formed and entrenched each state’s political institutions. The Populists also altered the terms on which these poor farmers and workers were incorporated into the state Democratic Parties that monopolized political competition after 1900. In states with more robust and better timed Populist mobilizations, the Populists successfully altered both the institutional structure of their states and the terms of factional competition within the Democratic Party in ways that materially benefitted poor white farmers and farmworkers. This legacy persisted for decades even under Jim Crow. I test this argument via a qualitative, empirical study based on archival research in four Deep South states: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina. I track patterns of Populist mobilization between 1888-1898. I then examine how these mobilized coalitions of rural agrarians influenced the constitutional conventions that entrenched Jim Crow, with a particular focus on legislative apportionment, fiscal capacity and the power of the executive branch. I then observe divergent patterns of party factionalism and redistribution, with a focus on public infrastructure and education, between 1900 and 1948.

Author

• Daniel Blinderman, University of Michigan