Beating Back Progress in 1890s North Carolina

Holy forgotten history, Batman! In 1890s North Carolina, the Fusion coalition brought together white farmers desperate for economic reform with disenfranchised Republicans and blacks to forge a new movement countering the entrenched (conservative) Democratic Party elite. The movement won big victories, instituted educational and political reform and elevated African-Americans to elected office, including George S. White, the last black U.S. Congressman of the Jim Crow era-- this decades after Reconstruction.

So what happened? The Democrats marshaled the forces of white supremacy and race fear to regain power, warning of race mixing and "negro domination."

Blacks were disenfranchised and the racial narrative was aggressively reasserted. It was after the Fusion period that many of the Confederate Memorials seen today were erected across the state, part of a successful effort to obliterate a past that included widespread Union sentiment in N.C. during the Civil War (Google "Red Strings").

Entrenched racism overwhelmed the economic motivations that, for a time, saw diverse Tar Heels make common cause. North Carolina would not elect another black member of Congress until... wait for it... 1992.

Lessons From History

The information above was gleaned from Timothy Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name.

Americans should be made better aware of the post-Reconstruction period in the South for many reasons, but especially to counter entrenched right-wing narratives about the meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction. As imperfect as it was, Reconstruction successfully laid the groundwork for black enfranchisement and political agency in the South, to the extent that these gains had to be overturned through calculated demagoguery and reactionary violence.

This counterrevolution is perhaps most starkly witnessed in North Carolina; look no further than the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898.