Prohibition was particularly well suited as a political issue that could bridge the racial divide in New South Charlotte.  Wealthy whites, who were becoming increasingly disgusted with the reckless and flagrant disregard for common decency exhibited by many drunks, were willing to form alliances with supporters wherever they could find them, even if they were black.  African Americans, especially those who had been educated in freedmen’s schools or taught by Northern missionaries, were likewise eager to join hands with the majority community.  C. C. Pettey , a minister and graduate of Biddle Institute, described liquor as “the accursed brutalizer and destroyer of humanity.” 

       In 1881, white prohibitionists in Charlotte established the Prohibition Association  to lobby the State legislature to pass a law outlawing whiskey anywhere and everywhere.  Women, including Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes , were the backbone of the organization.  During anti-whiskey municipal election campaigns in Apri1, and again in State-wide elections held later that year and in 1886 and 1888, the Prohibition Association invited blacks to share the rostrum and platform with whites at public rallies.  Not to be outdone, the pro-liquor crowd was also biracial.

      Although the “wets” eventually succeeded in keeping the saloons open, prohibitionists like W. C. Smith and white lawyer E. K. P. Osborne  had demonstrated that both sides of the color line could cooperate politically in Charlotte during the 1880s.  “Exploitation there was in that period,” says Woodward.  “Subordination there was also, unmistakable subordination; but it was not yet an accepted corollary that the subordinates had to be totally segregated and needlessly humiliated by a thousand daily reminders of their subordination.”

      It was in the 1890s that extreme racism gained the upper hand again in Charlotte and throughout the South.  New South boosters like D. A. Tompkins  and Edward Dilworth  Latta  became deeply concerned about the course of political events and feared that their influence over governmental affairs in Mecklenburg County  and North Carolina might diminish or even end.  They and their compatriots therefore decided to marshal their considerable resources and destroy this threat to their privileged positions, thereby setting into motion a series of reforms that would transform the nature of  public affairs in this community and in the South as a whole  for more than 60 years.

     There were three groups involved in attacking the political status quo in the 1890s -- impoverished farmers, disgruntled mill workers, and unhappy blacks.  They formed a political alliance that sought to topple the political dominance of the Democrat Party and its affluent leaders.  The issues were essentially power and money.   “Small farmers felt themselves losing power to the upstart railroad towns,” says historian Thomas Hanchett.  Factory workers, mostly tenant farmers who had been forced off the land, grieved over their loss of  status and the diminution of their sense of personal independence. Blacks, explains Hanchett, “looked for a way to finally attain the respect and influence due them as free citizens.”

Believing that collective action was their only means for relief, Mecklenburg farmers established a local branch of the Farmers’ Alliance  in 1888.  The Alliance sponsored picnics where rural families gathered to eat such "rural delicacies" as collard greens, cornbread, black-eyed peas, and pork chops while listening to speakers who would rail against the “enemies of the countryside.”  One “suspender-popping” orator warned his audience that time for resolute action was at hand, “for if we fail this time, the farmer’s doom is fixed, the merchants will have us where they will hold us forever.”  One wonders whether the children playing in the barnyards paid any attention to what the impassioned speakers were saying.  Their mothers and fathers certainly did.

    In 1892, disgruntled farmers gave up on their efforts to gain control of the Democrat Party and decided to establish a separate People’s or Populist Party  to advance their agenda.  Country folks were further embittered by the Panic of 1893, the most severe economic downturn the country had experienced up until that time.  Determined to sweep the Democrats aside and take command in North Carolina and other agricultural states, the Populists  set out to unite rank-and-file whites, including those who worked in the factories and the mills of the cities, with the Republican Party, which was overwhelmingly black, to achieve a majority coalition in upcoming elections.

        As already noted, the 1870s and 1880s had been a time of “tremendous hope” for African Americans in Charlotte, but by the early 1890s blacks were becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of on-going progress in race relations.  J. C. Price , president of Livingstone College in Salisbury, spoke to a biracial audience at the Charlotte City Hall in April 1893.  He described “the Southern race problem from the Negro’s point of view.”  African Americans, said Price, were “denied equal accommodation for the money on the railroad trains; he cannot get justice in the courts; he is lynched on slight provocation; he is denied equal participation with the white man in the affairs of government.”  

     “The pent-up frustrations of farmers, blacks, and ordinary North Carolinans whose interests had been ignored by the Democrat party exploded in the 1894 state elections,” writes historian Paul Escott.    The so-called “Fusionists” elected 74 members to the North Carolina legislature and sent two of their backers to the United States Senate.   The insurgents controlled 62 percent of the seats in the General Assembly in 1894 and 78 percent in 1896.

     Most of the local leaders of the campaign to intimidate and disenfranchise African Americans were members of the  Young Democrats Club .  Composed mainly of middle class professionals in their thirties or early forties, such as attorneys Heriot Clarkson  and Charles W. Tillett , the “Young Democrats” organized torchlight parades and held mass rallies to demonstrate their “bare-knuckle style” of determination to subdue the Populists  and terrorize black voters.  As many as 1500 “Young Democrats,” bedecked in flamboyant red shirts, rode periodically down Tryon Street at night on horseback, brandishing their weapons, thrusting their chests defiantly toward onlookers, and proclaiming the superiority of the white race.        

    The Democrats understood that the support of factory workers would be crucial in the upcoming election.   Consequently, they established the Workingmen's Democratic Club  and dispatched speakers to preach the mantra of white racial unity.  John D. Bellamy , a Democrat candidate for Congress, spoke to the laborers at Highland Park Manufacturing Plant No. 1  on September 27th.  He told the mill hands that the election would determine whether the affairs of North Carolina would “be controlled by the vicious, or whether they shall be put in the hands of the intelligent people of the State – the white people.”  The Republicans, Bellamy proclaimed, had “put the counties and towns of eastern North Carolina in the hands of the Negroes, who compose 95 percent of the Republican Party.”

The Populists  and the Republicans attempted in vain to stem the tidal wave of white racial antipathy that was running against African Americans.   On March 31, 1898, a lecturer at Biddle Institute told his audience that politicians  “should guard and protect” the interests of black citizens.  “Negro colonization, expatriation and similar schemes should be repudiated,” he insisted, “and the issues confronting the race should be met in a manly way.”  Oliver H. Dockery , a Republican candidate for Congress, speaking at a political meeting at the old courthouse on West Trade Street, was even more direct in his denunciation of what he believed the Democrats were attempting to accomplish.  According to a newspaper reporter who covered the event, Dockery insisted that his opponents “tried to narrow the issues down to one – the miserable cry of  n…..! n…..!”

     It is important to emphasize that the leaders of the Democratic Party did not consider themselves to be enemies of African Americans.  Indeed, to their way of thinking, all citizens, including blacks, would benefit from orderly government.  What historian Paul Escott derisively calls the privileged “better half” claimed that it alone was fit to rule.  “Be it our work, the work of all of us, to hasten the day when the dream of Southern supremacy through Southern prosperity shall be realized in all its fullness,” declared the Charlotte Observer  on March 6, 1898.

      Heriot Clarkson  discussed the issue of race while addressing a large Democratic rally held in Dilworth's Latta Park on October 14th.  According to the local press, Clarkson contended that the “white people had done much for the Negroes.” They had built schools for African Americans.  They had founded hospitals for African Americans.  They had established charitable institutions for African Americans.   But African Americans, Clarkson reportedly said,  “had always allied themselves most solidly against the whites, and hence the white voters were bound, in self defense, to stand together.”

       The Charlotte Observer   appealed  ever more directly to the racial prejudices of white voters as Election Day neared.  On October 22, 1898, the newspaper claimed that “the eyes of the nation” were upon North Carolina.  “ . . . unless the State rights itself at the coming election we are likely to fall under that contempt which is always visited upon cravens,”  the editors proclaimed.  “These lines are being printed just a little more than forty-eight hours before the opening of the polls," the Charlotte Observer declared on November 6th.  Calling Governor Russell "vicious and vindictive beyond any man in the State, the newspaperwent on to assert that the governor had “appointed rascals to office, knowing them to be rascals.”  “No one has written or told what momentous consequences are involved in the result of the balloting of Tuesday,” the editor wrote, “because no one can.” 

     The Democratic Party emerged victorious from the balloting on November 8th.  Predictably, the Charlotte Observer was overjoyed by the outcome.  "Tkhe people of North Carolina were true to themselves yesterday," the newspaper declared on November 9th. "The white people got together and won the election."  The shift in votes by precinct was actually relatively small, but Democrat totals did rise in every box in Charlotte Township, including the two mill boxes and the three rural boxes.   Just enough whites had abandoned the Populists  and the Republicans to produce a Democrat victory.  Statewide, the balloting put 134 Democrats in the General Assembly and only 36 Fusionists.  "Being in power again," said the Charlotte Observer about the Democrats, "the real people of North Carolina will proceed to enact laws which will be for the well being of all of our people, and we know that hereafter there will be peace and good government in our borders."

     The consequences of putting Democrats in control of both houses of the General Assembly were not long in coming.  Beholden to its elitist, anti-democratic constituencies, the majority party moved quickly to change the election laws so that most African Americans, hence Republicans, would not be able to continue to cast ballots.  Specifically, on February 18, 1899, the General Assembly proposed a constitutional amendment, modeled on a Louisiana statute, that would establish literacy requirements for voting except for those whites whose grandfathers had been able to vote.  Clearly, if approved by a referendum of the people, these new requirements for exercising the franchise would render the Republican Party politically impotent.  Charles B. Aycock , who would become the Democrat candidate for governor in 1900, knew exactly what was going on.  The amendment, he maintained, would be "the final settlement of the Negro problem as related to the politics of the state."

     The Democratic Party mounted another aggressive White Supremacy  campaign during the months preceding August 2, 1900, which was the day set aside for the referendum on the disenfranchisement amendment.  Red Shirts  rode the streets again, and huge rallies were held to embolden whites and to intimidate blacks.    Thousands of Democrats gathered on July 31^st to witness a parade that wound through the streets of Charlotte and eventually ended at Latta Park , where "leaders of the community" addressed the crowd.  Charlotte lawyer Hamilton C. Jones  was the first speaker.  "Another and the last great crisis to the State is reached," he proclaimed.  "North Carolina proposes to lift up the cloud that has rested upon her for 30 years, and it is determined that North Carolinians shall take their rightful place in the world -- freemen among freemen, Anglo-Saxon among Anglo-Saxon."  The Charlotte Observer  understood  what the referendum was about.  "The white man or the Negro -- that is the proposition that will be settled rightfully by night," said the newspaper on Election Day.  The constitutional amendment was approved by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent Statewide.

     The future electoral impact of the disenfranchisement amendment of August 1900 was profound.   "North Carolina had returned to an undemocratic political system that guaranteed the powerful in society effective means of protecting their power," writes Paul Escott.  "The state's elite minority was secure against democratic challenges once more."  The Republican Party was divested of its largest group of supporters, and the Populists  faded into obscurity.  With African Americans no longer able to win seats on elected bodies, the Democrats were able to superintend a one-party political system in the South. Indeed, despite substantial growth and development over the next sixty years, Charlotte did not fundamentally change in the years from 1900 until the mid-1950s, at least in terms of the locale of political authority.  Rich white men and their minions were in charge.   An early consequence of this circumstance, especially since racial prejudice against blacks had been a fundamental component of elite's campaign to regain power, was the enactment by the Democrats  of so-called "Jim Crow  Laws."  

     The origin of the term "Jim Crow " is obscure.  It most likely appeared in 1832, when Thomas D. Rice composed a song and dance routine called "Jim Crow" for a minstrel show.  Regardless, by 1900 it had become a derogatory nickname for African Americans.  Mostly enacted by city ordinances and other local regulations, Jim Crow laws appeared across the South in the early 1900s as a principal means to guarantee racial separation.  "The extremes to which caste penalties and separation were carried in parts of the South could hardly find a counterpart short of the latitudes of India and South African," writes C. Vann Woodward.

   Charlotte was no exception.  Imagine how the black citizens felt when the all-white Board of Aldermen passed an ordinance in 1907 instituting racial segregation on Charlotte's streetcars.  Fancy how they reacted emotionally to the announcement that the owners of Lakewood Park , a popular amusement complex, would not extend the fall season for a week in 1910, so the black residents of Charlotte could visit the facility, because the "fear existed that such a course might injure the resort in some manner, or might lesson the prestige."

At almost every turn, the black men and black women of Charlotte encountered developments that threatened their sense of self-esteem. In November 1911, the Board of School Commissioners announced that it was abandoning plans to construct a black school in Third Ward because of the "objections  which have been forthcoming from the citizens." In April 1911, black Sunday School teachers were invited to the Mecklenburg County Sunday School Association, but they had to sit in the balcony.   Even a play entitled "The N…." was performed on the stage of the elegant Academy of Music on South Tryon Street.  Within this cultural milieu, the black church served as a haven from the white man; there black men could exhort their congregations to persevere in the face of adversity and scorn.

   The message of the White Supremacists was unmistakable.  They contended that what they called Anglo Saxon values must rein supreme because in their minds such beliefs alone would assure the advancement of all Southerners.  Tompkins maintained that any man, black or white, could succeed in achieving the American Dream if he worked hard enough.  By practicing self-discipline and becoming educated, African Americans might one day demonstrate their worthiness to participate on an equal footing with whites in the political realm; but for now they must be subservient to whites in governmental affairs. 

     Factory workers also suffered discrimination at the hands of the New South leaders in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Unlike most of Charlotte's earlier manufacturing establishments, which had had relatively few workers, factories like Latta's Charlotte Trouser Company  (1883) and the Alpha , Ada , and Victor  Cotton Mills (1889) attracted hundreds of laborers to town. Most were newcomers who had little, if any, loyalties to local elites. It became increasingly difficult within this cultural milieu to maintain the feelings of cordiality that had characterized social relationships between classes in pre-industrial Charlotte. For the first time residential enclaves filled exclusively with cottages for mill workers began to appear on the outskirts of Charlotte. To quote Hanchett, "The close-knit relationships of the small workplace were giving way to less personal interactions between the factory owner and his numerous and interchangeable employees."

     The disenfranchisement amendment approved in 1900 stipulated that the infamous "Grandfather Clause" would last for only seven years and that thereafter illiterate whites would also be prevented from voting unless they had already registered.    This provision resulted from the elite's skepticism concerning the likelihood that industrial workers would remain loyal to the Democrat Party.   Strikes reinforced these feelings of distrust.  In 1905, typographical workers struck the local newspapers, machinists walked off their jobs at D. A. Tompkins  Company,  and messengers vacated Western Union. It was not uncommon for prosperous Charlotteans to refer to millhands and their families as "white trash" or the "ignorant factory set," says Hanchett.

     The ostensible reason for the walkout was a dispute regarding the company's refusal to turn on electric heaters in the trolleys. The strikers generally received public support for their refusal to continue to operate unheated streetcars. "The people here in Charlotte are with the strikers and they are sure to win if they are orderly and well behaved," the Charlotte Observer  predicted. The Charlotte News  also supported the action of the motormen and conductors, insisting that the citizens were "overwhelmingly with the men on the main question that the cars ought to be heated." Edward Dilworth  Latta , who was in New York City when the strike broke out, arrived in Charlotte on December 3rd to find many townspeople wearing buttons that boldly proclaimed, "I walk."

     Latta, however, remained adamant in a letter to the Charlotte News  published on December 5, 1903:

I regret, beyond expression, the exigency of the situation, causing me to part with a body of men for many of whom I hold a personal attachment; but it could scarcely be expected by any thoughtful fair-minded person that on my return I would dismiss those who had graciously rallied to our interests and reinstate others who, without provocation during my absence, elected to abandon their position with no other expectation than that the company and the public would be without service.

The situation worsened on December 8th, when Latta announced that the Four Cs was turning on the heaters in the cars but that the former motormen and conductors would not be reinstated. The Charlotte News  proclaimed in a blistering editorial that the "only honest and manly thing to do under God's heaven" was for the company to admit that it was wrong and restore the men to their jobs. The newspaper challenged Latta directly, questioning the status of the Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company  as a reputable corporate citizen and suggesting that the Charlotte Board of Aldermen might want to review carefully the gas, electric, and trolley  franchises it had awarded in the 1890s to the Four Cs. The editorial writer minced no words in his conclusion: "The company has already given the strongest impetus to municipal ownership of the public utilities of this city that could have been given. And if the company wins, it will be a dear victory in the end."