The piece that Jon Kukla posted restates, in summary form, Degler's
coverage of Mahone and the Readjusters in his 1970s work_The Other
South_. In fact, as he notes, Reconstruction was not the end of
white-black political coalitions in the post-Civil War South. All
through the 1880s and 1890s there were in most of the southern states
actual or attempted coalitions of white Independents and black and white
Republicans. They were most successful in VA and in NC with the
Fusionist victory in the mid-1890s. Only the disfranchising movement,
constitutional changes, in every southern state from 1890 to 1917
removed the "threat" of black-white political coalitions.
Jim Hershman
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