Library of Alabama Classics
3 total works
During the decades of Bourbon ascendancy after 1874, Alabama institutions - like those in other southern states - were dominated by whites. Former slave and sharecropper Jack Turner refused to accept a society so structured. Highly intelligent, physically imposing, and an orator of persuasive talents, Turner was fearless before whites and emerged as a leader of his race. He helped to forge a political alliance between blacks and whites that defeated and humiliated the Bourbons in Choctaw County, the heart of the Black Belt, in the election of 1882. That summer, after a series of bogus charges and arrests, Turner was accused of planning to lead his private army of blacks in a general slaughter of the county whites. Justice was forgotten in the resultant fear and hysteria.
"This vignette of local southern history . . . recounts Renfroe's career as sheriff of Sumter County for a little more than two years, followed by six years of bizarre activities as a fugitive from justice before being lynched in July 1886. . . . He led the local Ku Klux Klan in 1868-69, participated in the Meridian riot of 1871, and took part in the killing of two active Republicans, one white and one black, in 1874. Rumors attributed other slayings to this violence-prone man who in 1867 had fled another county after killing his brother-in-law. . . . The story clearly illustrates the violent tactics of the redemption process."--Journal of American History
Written as a case study of the causes of the Alabama miner's strike in 1894, this book explains how during an economic depression period, the strong trade union of the United Mineworkers of Alabama was founded and it was this that became instrumental in the coal miners and railway worker's strike. This book recalls the particular conditions under which the strike was started and the connected issues of the racial problem and the struggle between the Bourbon Democrats and the Populists.