"Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union"

 Was formed in in 1886 in Texas. Despite the fact that both African American and white farmers faced 

great difficulties due to the rising price of farming and the decreasing profits which were coming from farming, the protective organization known as the Southern Farmers Alliance did not allow African American farmers to join.A group of African American farmers decided to organize their own alliance,to fill their needs. The organization rapidly spread across the Southern United States, peaking with a membership of 1.2 million in 1891.

The Farmers Alliance was founded in central Texas in 1876,through the efforts of farmers at self-protection from 'land sharks,' merchants, horse thieves,and cattle ranchers.The constitution of the initial  Texas order, drafted in 1882,denied  to African American farmers on the grounds that the alliance was a social organization "where we meet with our wives and daughters." Leaders of the alliance realized that it was impossible to established a profitable agricultural system while a large African American population served as potential competitors and a source of cheap,exploitable labor.

The Colored Farmers National Alliance and Cooperative Union was founded in Houston Texas,on 

December 11,1886,on the farm of  of  R.M. Humphrey,a white alliance member and Baptist missionary.The alliance elected  JJ Shuffer as its first president.Although the orders' barred whites 

from membership,JJ  was elected honorary  superintendent. As increasingly repressive Black Codes were enacted, JJ  served as a "white spokesman who could openly express militancy and have access that would be denied to African Americans.By 1888 the alliance received a charter from the US Federal Government.They quickly after began to spread and found chapters in different states across the south.

In 1890 they merged with a rival alliance,the National Colored Alliance. They also absorbed the Colored Agricultural Wheels in Arkansas,western Tennessee and Alabama.By 1890,the Colored Farmers' Alliance claimed  over 1,2000,000 members.

The order's statement of principles was in the vein of Booker T.Washington,promoting economic 

self-sufficiency and racial 'uplift' through vocational training, at the expense of demands for political equality.They tried to educate the farmers about farming tactics and techniques, set up exchanges in the ports of  Nolfolk,Charleston,Mobile,New Orleans and  Houston,where members could go in order to purchase discounted items required for their farming.They advocated members'

avoiding debt hard work and sacrifice,and suggested goals such as home ownership.They collaborated with the white farmers' Alliance in opposing the Louisiana State Lottery Company and

efforts to tax the production of cottonseed oil,and extremely valuable crop for African American tenant farmers.The two alliances  spilt in 1890 over a Federal Elections Bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep.Henry Cabot Lodge,which authorized federal supervision of voter registration and voting.It was designed to end suppression of Southern Republican votes,particulary 

African American votes, which had been under considerable pressure by the Democratic state legislatures.Virtually all white southerns,including the farmers' Alliance denounced the bill as a return to the polices of  Reconstruction, and the Democrats succeeded in in making it in central issue

of the of the 1892 Presidential election in the South.R.H. sought to downplay the issue,insisting that 

African-American suffrage would be protected  through the alliance movement.The majority of African American Populist supported renewed federal intervention to preserve their civil rights, which were being eroded by state changes to voter registration and electoral laws.

In 1891, after the spilt over the elections bill, the Colored Alliance called a general strike of African-American cotton-pickers to demand a wage increase from 50 cents to $1.00 per hundred pounds of cotton.The white Farmers's Alliance whose membership in the South included large numbers of landowners, employing sharecroppers,were the most vehement opponents of the proposed strike.

The Progressive Farmer, paper of farmers Alliance President Leonidas L.Polk,urged "our farmers 

to leave their cotton in the field rather than pay more than 50 cents per hundred to have it picked.

The leadership of the Colored Alliance lacked the resources to mobilized the vast majority of sharecroppers who were illiterate or semi-literate and lacked sources of income.The Georgia chapter 

of the Colored Alliance,with a large contingent of landowners,refused to support the strike,viewing it as deterimental to the interests of African-American farmers who owned or rented their land.

A minor cotton pickers strike of 1891 in the Arkansas Delta in September was crushed by local vigilantes,resulting in the death of fifteen strikers,including several who were lynched.

By the 18 the end of 1891, with the failure of the cotton-pickers strike, the Colored Farmers' Alliance

began to decline in both membership and political influence.The Texas branch continued to be active

by the spring of 1892. Alexander Asberry,an African-American Republican state legislator from 

Robertson County,was elected state president and founded a newspaper,  the Alliance Vindicator.

By the end of 1892 the Texas Colored Farmers' Alliance had largely disappeared.And by extension,

the National Colored Farmers' Alliance dissapeared  after 1896 with the demise of the Populist Party, from where its member were generally recruited.

At the 1892 St. Louis convention of the Southern and Northern Farmers' Alliances, JJ  secured the 

vote of the Colored Farmers' Alliance for the creation of an independent third-party,helping override opposition from the white Southern Alliance delegates.He packed the  Colored Farmers' Alliance 

delegation with pro-third party white men in a series of proxy deals that were contrary to the organization's charter.The African-American delegates from Georgia Colored Farmers' Alliance, 

whose leadership opposed the formation of a third party,walked out of the convention in protest over this action.Only four African-American delegates were in attendance at the founding convention of the People's Party on the 4th of     July in Omaha.

The Populists hoped to bypass African-American politicians, who they viewed as corrupt, by directly 

appealing to African-American farmers via the Colored Alliance.The Colored Alliance was in rapid, decline and the African-American Republican politicians and newspapers were largely critical  of the Southern Populists,whose claims of support for African-American civil rights were largely rhetorical  and disingenuous.

In most Southern states, the stronghold of Populism was in the old yeoman-dominated hill-country 

white belt regions, whose inhabitants played a leading role in the rebellions Reconstruction,only to be only marginalized by the old black belt planters allied with Northern capital and corporate interests,especially  the railroads.The Populists opposed the convict least system and denounced 

Democratic reliance on threats of ' Negro domination.' At the same time,they steadfastly maintained 

that they did not support 'social equality' between the races and often sought allegations that they 

compromised white racial solidarity by insisting that they were the true party of white supremacy.

A number of Southern Populists sought to rid the south of African-Americans by promoting emigration,either to Africa or to the West.Leonidas formulated a plan to create a separate all

African-American state in the West,preferably Texas.Populist Congressman Tom Watson of 

Georgia is often cited as the man example of  the initial racial liberalism of Southern Populism,

acknowledging African-Americans as an integral part of Southern economy and society. 

He had an antagonistic relationship with the leadership of the states' Colored Alliance and, after 

being defeated through Bourbon Democrat manipulation of the African-American vote, gradually became an advocate of  African-American disenfranchisement.