Class and the color line: The sources and limits of interracial class coalition, 1880--1896

This research examines the simultaneous negotiation of class and race boundaries in three significant social movements active in the United States during the late 19th century---the Knights of Labor, the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party. Using these movements as a context, I seek to advance sociological thinking about the nature of the link between class and race. Two basic questions motivate this research. First, I ask how these movements construct and articulate their identities. Specifically, I ask how the boundaries of race and class linked in each movement's identity claims and resulting statements of interest. Second, I ask how each movement's success in interracial organizing was shaped by the structure and process of interactions at the local level.;At the movement level, I build a systematic database of statements from each movement linking the two social boundaries. This database includes the population of all such statements that appeared in the relevant movement journals over the active life of each organization. These coded dimensions allowed me to evaluate the nature of the link between class and race in the movement dialogues. I show that the language of class that motivated the identity claims of all three movements provided opportunities for interracial organizing.;These opportunities were in fact taken up at the local level, and they shaped the practical course of organizing. I show that there were clear limits to interracial organizing provided by the structure and history of specific local contexts, as well as by the process of the organizing effort itself. In particular, the movement dialogues of class equality did not extend to what was commonly referred to as "social equality." A second issue at the local level was the degree to which movement narratives fit the practical understanding of actors. Third, the arena in which the movements directed their practical activity was important in determining the degree to which the interracial coalitions were sustainable. Fourth, the experience of events in the course of these movements affected the narratives of race and class interest in local contexts.