Jacobin | Prairie View A&M University/Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Getty
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.