In the 1890s, populism nearly unseated the Democratic Party in Texas. In the years that followed, conservative and white supremacist backlash rose to ensure that the populist People’s Party — the promising, yet imperfect, alliance between poor farmers, including between black and white Texans — would no longer be able to threaten the power of the Texas elites. The fight to rid Grimes County, Texas, a county where Donald Trump won 79 percent of the vote in 2024, is emblematic of just how severe the backlash against Populism was and how far the conservative Democratic establishment was willing to go to restrict democracy, even resorting to violence.

In those pivotal years, Populism came within striking distance of ending the two-party system in Texas. To fend it off, the Democrats resorted to ballot stuffing and election rigging. As the revolt began to crumble, Democrats initiated a series of restrictions to reinforce their hold on power, effectively barring Populists from participating in Democratic Party affairs. But for the Democrats’ left wing, this created a new problem: by liquidating the Populists from their ranks, the party’s conservative bloc became the strongest in the room. To fix this, party members turned to former Governor Jim Hogg, who had earlier so capably tied the Farmers’ Alliance into knots by offering a slow trickle of reforms. Hogg convinced Democrats to weaken their voter restrictions and, importantly, recommit to railroad and corporate reform. It took multiple election cycles, but by 1902, the more conservative (and whiter) congregations of the agrarian revolt were pulled back into the Democratic fold.

Meanwhile, Democrats also disenfranchised black voters by introducing a poll tax and “white man’s primaries” — breaking another pillar of the People’s Party broad coalition. Workers, black and white, would have to pay between $1.50 and $1.75 to vote. Many farmers were already perpetually in debt, and most made, as historian Thomas Alter II notes, “little more than $425 a year,” meaning most working Texans were effectively disenfranchised. It’s not surprising that voting rates in Texas plummeted following these “reforms.” In one fell swoop, former Populists only had one ally they could turn to — the Hogg wing of the Democratic Party — or else Democrats’ conservative faction would reign supreme. Many Populist leaders went along with the changes, embracing the trade-off for influence. Though many in leadership took this deal, a fair amount of former Populist voters rejected it. The 1902 election, the year the poll tax was officially adopted, saw the “largest opposition to disenfranchisement centered in North Texas,” a hotbed of Populism. This was no sure thing; many Populist leaders actually supported the poll tax, but among the People’s Party rank and file, “Eighty-one percent of those voting the Populist ticket in 1902 opposed the poll tax.”