“Populism had put in the minds of blacks certain higher expectations of life, and these could not be beaten out by the boots of any Secret Nine or Red Shirts or other terrorist groups. Incorporated into the blacks’ past by 1900 were not only the heady power given to them and protected for them by Reconstruction governments but the more sober experience of Populism. In the Populist movement black people got a sense of being equal participants in the political process, rather than mere recipients of federal favors; of gaining their ends by the power of the vote. Numbers of blacks had worked and socialized with white people of similar interests on a level of relative equality if not actual integration; had had the experiences of organizing and campaigning, of committee work, party politics, national conventions; of listening to and talking and reading about advanced economic ideas such as co-operatives and unions.

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making o…, loc. 2212