Multiparty Politics in Mississippi, 1877-1902 [Book Review]

Abstract

It was not easy to make Mississippi politically solid, even after the carnival of white Democratic violence in 1875. In this first intensive study of the political movements (Greenback, Republican, Independent, and Populist) that opposed the Democrats during the post-Reconstruction era in the Magnolia State, Stephen Cresswell demonstrates that the repeated efforts of African Americans and white small farmers to fight back against deflation and corruption were savagely put down with a combination of violence, threats, fraud, cooptation of issues, and, finally and most effectively, disfranchisement. Dissent was not confined to the hill country, and the Populist movement was smaller and less effective than its predecessors because the 1890 constitutional convention had robbed most of its potential black and white supporters of their right to vote.