In the late 19th century in the rural south poor whites banded with the freedmen to

[ej510]

work together against the wealthy elite. Together they were a formidable group. They worked together to improve economic circumstances for working people. This biracial group would go on to defeat democrats and republicans, this party was called the liberal party. It didn't last because democrats and republicans played the race card and racism won out. The elite pitted poor vs poor and working class vs working class. Some of the working class and poor are played today just like they were then. If the poor could close ranks then we can surely close ranks now.

[jody]

1. How many freedmen were in the south in the 1800-1850 period, the early 19th century? nt

[Useless in FL]

8. Thank you!

Off topic.... I loved Pogo! I miss it as much as I miss Calvin and Hobbes!

[ej510]

9. Not sure.

[jody]

11. There were a few, my relatives among them. nt

[leftstreet]

2. The "Liberal Party?"

what was that?

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Link? (nt)

[monmouth]

4. I think it's from the Bachmann History series...n/t

[onager]

6. Sounds like the late 19th century Populists

Led by William Jennings Bryan and Georgia politician Tom Watson, among others.

Speaking to racially mixed audiences throughout Georgia, Watson delivered his famous "Keystone Speech:" "You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.

You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars you both."

In the 1892 election, one of Watson's campaign managers was a black dentist. When the Ku Klux Klan threatened to lynch him, an army of poor blacks and whites turned out with their shotguns and squirrel rifles to stand guard for several days.

In the hotly-contested (and famously crooked) 1896 election, Watson was supposed to be Bryan's running mate. At the last minute, Bryan picked a more conservative and virulently anti-union V-P candidate. (Sound familiar?)

Within ten years of the "Keystone Speech," Watson was supporting the KKK and spouting anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic garbage. And as we all know from "Inherit The Wind," William Jennings Bryan later became a Fundamentalist crackpot who tried to turn back the clock on all of Western civilization.

If you've never read it, check out Vachel Lindsay's poem about the 1896 election, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan. And prepare to be depressed about how little things have changed:

Election night at midnight:
Boy Bryan's defeat.
Defeat of western silver.
Defeat of the wheat.
Victory of letterfiles
And plutocrats in miles
With dollar signs upon their coats,
Diamond watchchains on their vests
And spats on their feet.
Victory of custodians,
Plymouth Rock,
And all that inbred landlord stock.
Victory of the neat.
Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys,
The blue bells of the Rockies,
And blue bonnets of old Texas,
By the Pittsburgh alleys.
Defeat of the alfalfa and the Mariposa lily.
Defeat of the Pacific and the long Mississippi.
Defeat of the young by the old and silly.
Defeat of tornadoes by the poison vats supreme.
Defeat of my boyhood, defeat of my dream.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080601200852rn_1/www.geocities.com/vachellindsaybryan/

[jwirr]

7. Ever heard of the Freedmen's Bureau? You need to read black history, nt

[jody]

10. Freedmen's Bureau was in the late 19th century. nt

[truedelphi]

5. My understanding is that the notorious "Jim Crow" laws were put together and

Used to keep the uppity poor whites and uppity poor blacks from achieving anything. <sarcasm meant in terms of using the term "uppity.">

At the turn of the century, many black households were rr4ealtviely well off. but those laws pushed them back out of prosperity and into the overall ghetto-ization.

By the forties and fifties, black families, even in Chicago, could either pay cash for a house, or have interest rates much higher than whites. And in Chicago, the Bartlett Real Estate company had seen to it since the nineteen teens that black people could mainly have housing far south of the city, in the Roseland area.

In the nineteen teens, that meant a black family was mainly surrounded by onion fields and prairie, if they lived there.