in both the North and the South when it came to having equality with the white man. There were debates in state legislatures over whether or not the federal government should provide small plots of land for the black man. There were the massive efforts of ex-slaves to obtain the basic fundamentals of a common school education and their were the southern white politicians who fought to exclude Negroes from legislatures in many states, in particular Georgia and South Carolina. In the South, decades of dominance, oppression and fear directed at the black man continued almost unabated. One area whites were most intimidated over was the ability to blacks to vote and enter the political sphere. Nonetheless, there were many efforts across the South to eliminate the black man from the political arena, “In 1890 some Southern whites were celebrating what may well be described as an uneasy victory over the individuals and groups that favored the enfranchisement of the Negro. Many Negroes had, of course, retired from politics. Some had retreated as the point of the guns of white supremacists, while others had found it impossible to cope with the economic pressures, fantastic obstacles at polling places, and a variety of petty ‘legal’ nuisances,” (Scheiner and Edelson, 1971: 260).
For all of the obstacles in their way, the Negroes continued to exert an influence in the political world, to the chagrin of many whites who wished the Negro element would disappear from politics altogether. However, in the late 1880s there were eight Negroes in the Virginia Assembly, seven Negroes in the Mississippi legislature and three Negroes in the federal Congress. This situation only continued to raise fears and alarm across the South, and white candidates were forced by the Negroes persistence to begin to consider them an element in politics if they hoped to have a change for any kind of victory in areas where there were particularly heavy con...