Texas’ Radical Past Points to a Possible New Future

In a recent article for Jacobin, Griscom took Texas Democrats to task for their misguided “belief that that some combination of mobilization and favorable demographic shifts will deliver victory. It’s the kind of thinking that inspires passive campaigns and disastrous election results.” The opposite of this approach, he writes, is the kind of working-class politics represented by James Talarico, who won Texas’ Democratic Party Senate primary in March. Such class-centered campaigning “is about convincing voters to see politics in a new light and see themselves as members of a larger group of working people, bucking the culture war, and uniting around a simple message of economic populism.”

In this Barn Raiser interview, we asked Griscom what lessons from the past—drawn from his state’s largely forgotten history—might be useful in present day campaigns against the big money and corporate power that’s riding high again in Texas and too many other states. 

Barn Raiser readers live in a lot of places where the brand of “economic populism” they’re exposed to is the MAGA version. It’s business-friendly and anti-labor, has a lot of elite backing and is often riddled with nativism and racism. You’ve written a new book that deals with an older form of populism found in Texas and other rural states more than a century ago. What’s the difference between that populism and the Trump product on sale today?

I think populism probably is one of the most abused words in American politics. As the label is often applied now, you’re a populist if you use any kind of “us against them” rhetoric. In the Texas populist movement, there was certainly plenty of that. But it was coming from everyday people who were talking about themselves versus the railroad industry, the big banks and a state government beholden to these special interests. That kind of economic populism reflects real personal experience, and it has the potential to unite working people around shared economic interests.

What motivated you to debunk the “myth of Red Texas”? I understand that President Lyndon Johnson’s grandfather, Samuel Johnson Sr., was once a People’s Party leader in Texas, before his grandson became a New Deal Democrat who articulated his vision of “the Great Society.” Did you have any similar family ties to populism?

There are a few reasons I wanted to write the book. I’ve always found this history to be very interesting, and we find ourselves to be in a similar political moment. One of my favorite quotes from an early populist leader posed the enduring question: “Why is it that those who work most get least, and those who work least get most?” As I look around right now, I see a lot of people asking similar questions. Like small farmers in Texas during the 1870s, 1880s and the 1890s, many working people today are finding that the current system isn’t working very well for them.

They’ve been betrayed by both the political elite and the economic elite, and some are actively trying to figure out how to push back. That makes this a good moment to write about populism, in its original form, asking similar questions about how you link people across different regions and states. How do you organize industrial and agricultural workers? And unite them around common interests?

These are major political questions that progressives are still wrestling with today. As a Texan, and a very proud one, I’ve always been interested in the state’s history. But I often found that the story of everyday working people took second place to grand narratives that focused on a single individual, usually a larger-than-life Texas character.

Now, in my book, there’s plenty of fascinating folks. But one of the striking things about this era was just how expansive the populist and socialist movements were. They weren’t just about one individual doing good things in politics; they were rooted in collective action. Everyday people came together, fought for a better life, and developed the capacity to govern themselves.

Can you give us any little-known highlights of your state’s agrarian radical traditions?

So much of the official history of Texas emphasizes the role of the elites—the bosses and the masters—not everyday people. In Red Texas, I tell the story of the “fence cutters.”

Texas wasn’t as devastated during the Civil War as the rest of the Confederacy. So, afterwards, there was a great deal of Northern and British investor interest in the state. These absentee owners started buying up tremendous amounts of land. And that massive bonanza coincided with the invention of barbed wire.

Previously, there had been an actual physical limit to how much land you could claim for yourself. If you have to build a fence out of rock, there’s only so many rocks that you can pull from the ground. The new capitalist class, which began enclosing large parts of the state, didn’t just surround their own land with wire fences; they also barred access to streams and grasslands. It prevented small landholders and also landless cowboys from being able to raise cattle because they couldn’t move from place to place or get access to water.

In Texas there was always this idea of the open range. It was this understanding that the land belonged to the people. So this entire tradition of cowboying was at risk due to the spread of barbed wire. In response, landless cowboys and poor farmers started cutting fences, and it very quickly became a political movement.

They mounted such a threatening hit-and-run revolt against enclosure that the power structure, at the time, had to restore “law and order” by creating the Texas Rangers to track them down and arrest or kill them.

The Rangers, of course, have shrouded themselves in myth and legend. Yet more Texans today, with deep roots in the state, are likely to be descendants of those who broke the law, rather than those who enforced it.

In central Texas, much of that region’s fascinating history has been misunderstood and misremembered. In the mid-1800s, its new settlers included immigrants forced to leave Germany after the failed revolution of 1848. As political radicals and supporters of the Union, they were very much against slavery. When the Civil War began, Confederate soldiers went from town to town trying to conscript people into their rebel army. The Germans refused to participate, and their draft resistance led to a pitched battle in a state that was part of the Confederacy.

It’s fascinating to drive through that part of Texas of today and know that it was once the heart of the abolitionist movement in the state, then a few decades later, a hotbed of Texas populism, and then a hotbed of Texas socialism.

During the United States’ involvement in World War I, which the Socialist Party in Texas and Oklahoma strongly opposed, some Anglo-Texans tried to terrorize their German-American neighbors because of their perceived war-time disloyalty to the United States of America.

Once you start scratching beneath the surface of Texas history, you find examples of many beautiful and inspiring acts of resistance, but also political repression and violence in response.

In some progressive circles today, there is renewed interest in challenging “the duopoly” (i.e. domination of politics by conservative Republicans and corporate Democrats). Could you explain what made the People’s Party, in its heyday, a viable third party with a strong grassroots base?

It’s fascinating to read founding documents of the People’s Party and its policy positions. On one hand, they included very lofty demands, because they were willing to be radical. But, at the same time, their proposed solutions were extremely practical, because the party sought basic, simple reforms of the system that everyday people could understand.

In Texas at the time, many small farmers saw themselves as workers. Protection of laborers and recognition of trade unions were important demands for them. The populists also wanted to create cooperative stores and, on a much larger scale, bring railroads under public ownership and regulate corporate America in other ways.

The federal government was so pig-headed at the time that it was creating an economic crisis by refusing to expand the U.S. monetary system from the gold standard. Populists demanded the incorporation of silver as backing for the dollar, which became a big galvanizing cry in rural America. The folks running Washington and Texas weren’t interested in looking out for everyday folks. So, when the powerful refused to acquiesce to the demands of the people, that showed which side they were on and led to the further growth of Texas populism.

Who are some historians, academic or popular, who have plowed this field before? Did you find the work of Lawrence Goodwyn, a fellow Texan, helpful in terms of your own research and writing?

For direct sources, being able to access, with my laptop, digital archives with all the historical papers of the populist and the socialist movements has been a real boon. Goodwyn’s book on populism remains a must-read for anybody interested in this period. In Red Texas, I cite him heavily.  

One of my objectives—in addition to reintroducing people our radical past in Texas—was reconnecting progressives of my generation to the trail blazing work of historians and thinkers like Goodwyn and James Green. Before he wrote about mine worker history and many other topics, Green’s first book, Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895-1943, was a study of the pre-World War I Socialist Party in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. My hope is that readers of my book will go out and buy a copy of Goodwyn or Green’s work as well.

You’re a modern-day podcaster, using technology to attract popular audiences to Left Reckoning. But even in the days before radio, TV, or internet existed, there was a similar corporate domination of the mainstream media that exists today. Could you explain how populists and socialists used alternative newspapers—like Appeal to Reason, The Rural Citizen and The Rebel—to reach farmers and workers?

These publications were indispensable. Reading them more than a century later, it is fascinating to see how their political ideas were propagated in Texas and other big agricultural states. Their widespread distribution facilitated organizational communication and provided a popular forum for debate and discussion of the issues of the day.

Now, some people might be asking how these papers could have flourished in a period when the level of literacy, especially among poor and working-class people, was lower than it is today. That problem was addressed by a really important populist practice called “front porch readings.” And by the use of traveling lecturers.

As I describe in the book, somebody in the community who was literate would literally sit in front of a house, gather neighbors around them, and share news and commentary from a paper just arrived at the post office. This was both a great way to get information out and it helped create community, unlike today when modern forms of media encourage us to consume things in isolation. It’s nice to get good ideas piped directly into your home, but it’s even better to share them as a part of a movement building process.

You describe the political “encampments” that brought people together in sparsely populated rural areas. What were these events like?

During the summer season, a slower period for farmers, there were massive gatherings across Texas. These encampments would last for weeks. They would feature nationally known speakers from the populist and socialist movements, like Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs. Recalling his experience on the stump in 1914 among all those sunburnt Texans, Debs was struck by the religious fervor of the crowds, which included whole families. To attract such an audience, you also needed to have a big band, a good cold source of water for people to swim in, and good food, all of which made politics fun and enjoyable.

In the book, I describe a social gathering among members of the Brotherhood of Timbers Worker, a rare radical inter-racial union. It was a very powerful moment in the Jim Crow South when black and white workers came together, enjoying brisket, beans and ribs. And what could be more Texan than good barbecue and a good party?

Such events helped foster a spirit of solidarity and community that’s either missing today or too much of an abstract idea. But when the bosses and their government started attacking such movements—and they did—people were more apt to stand up and fight for each other.

It was not long before agrarian radicals started mounting major electoral challenges to the Democratic Party. What were some of the tensions and political differences between the populist and socialist movements that you write about and mainstream Democrats during this period?

In the book, I describe a major debate in the 1880s within the Farmers Alliance, a precursor to the People’s Party, about whether to support Democrats or run candidates as part of a third party. The populists who favored participation in the Democratic Party got their first major victory by electing 300-pound James Hogg as governor of Texas in 1890. He ended up putting some important regulatory reforms in place like a state Railroad Commission.

Hogg wasn’t particularly interested in going beyond that and building a “cooperative commonwealth,” as many in the Farmers Alliance wanted. He definitely didn’t like these pesky farmers bothering him about who he appointed to Railroad Commission, after it was established. He started to wage war on the populist cohort within the Democratic Party. This led more radical elements in the movement to pursue third-party building. That allowed them to campaign on a platform that really spoke to the needs of farmers and other people still left out of politics, because they didn’t have powerful friends in Austin.

As early 20th century successors to the People’s Party in Texas, local socialists also had some electoral victories but, with less voter support. They were great champions of the state’s impoverished tenant farmers. To defeat its rivals on the left, the Democrats put forward a whole list of proposals lifted directly from the platform of the Socialist Party, albeit watered down. So both of these movements—in victory and defeat—ended up giving voice to people still under-represented in state legislatures and Congress today.

Do you see any echoes of the populist movement today, such as in Dan Osborn’s union-backed race in Nebraska for a U.S. Senate seat in 2024 and again this year?

I think Osborn’s campaigns are a very important development for labor when it comes to politics. Running as an independent is a smart political strategy in Nebraska. It allows him to criticize the Republican establishment, while also being able to criticize the Democratic Party, which, let’s be honest, has also betrayed the interests of working-class people.

The most important thing about his campaign message is that it’s really simple. It’s simple and conveyed by face-to-face discussion of kitchen table issues that are affecting everyday people. Being a past local leader of the working class, not just somebody who’s talking about the working class, makes him a very effective voice for populist politics. Running more candidates with union backgrounds should be a big part of efforts to revive democracy in this country.

Let me ask about a fellow in Austin who for many years was the best-known progressive populist in Texas. How does Jim Hightower’s singular career, which included a long stretch in the 1980s as the state’s elected agricultural commissioner, fit into your story?

As a political figure, Hightower very much fashioned himself as an inheritor of our state’s populist tradition. His early electoral success was a testament to its continuing viability, but his ascendancy coincided with the end of an era in which the Democratic Party was dominant in Texas.

As agriculture commissioner, Hightower came up with a lot of creative ideas for supporting small farming in the state, some of which were considered kooky at the time. Unfortunately, his tenure in office was cut short. The free market policies that ended up dominating Texas agriculture afterwards helped decimate everyday family farmers, rather contribute to their survival.

Hightower’s lasting legacy was his ability to speak to working-class people. His podcast is great, his writing is great, and we still see him around town here in Austin. I think he’s a very positive figure. Whenever you listened to him and saw that cowboy hat on his head, you knew he was upholding the political tradition that I describe in the book.

In its late 20th century heyday, Arkansas Communities Organizing for Reform Now (ACORN) had a number of chapters in Texas and operated very much in the spirit of the old populists. ACORN knocked on doors and signed members up in poor and working-class communities. It also did some low-wage worker organizing through the vehicle of an independent union. Are there grassroots groups like that challenging corporate power in Texas today?

During the 1930s in Arkansas, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union operated in much the same way. They would send organizers into rural communities, where it was relatively easy to find people, where they socialized in predictable places, and everybody knew each other.

Today, we live in a more isolated world, a very antisocial era, and I don’t think that’s accidental. Labor unions, where they exist, continue to play the most constant role in working people’s lives. We’ve also seen the growth of local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, which does both political organizing and community work. One of the big challenges facing anybody who does this kind of work is finding effective ways to put these ideas into practice.

You mentioned “religious fervor” a little earlier. A state legislator and former seminarian now running for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas has, in your words, “infused his Christianity with an economic populist message” and “tapped into growing anger against the billionaire class.” Can James Talarico turn Texas blue in November?

Talarico winning his s primary race was exciting for multiple reasons. He has inspired a lot of hope, especially among Texas Democrats. Most people recognize that they’re kind of getting screwed, they’re getting left behind, and things are changing in the state. The Republicans have been very effective turning some of the resulting anger, frustration, and anxiety against new Texans, the people who have moved here recently.

Talarico’s message is focused on the top, not the bottom—on the elites and those who have benefited from this kind of system. He says that the class of top earners in Texas are responsible for a lot of our woes. This encourages people to think about things more on a class level. It allows some who might otherwise vote Republican to feel included in his messaging. And that’s very important in a state dominated by the Republican Party for so long.

In 2018, when Beto O’Rourke ran for our other U.S. Senate seat and lost narrowly to Ted Cruz, he went to every county in Texas, which was a good strategy, even if it didn’t end up winning him many votes among deep red conservative Texans

It assured people who were advocating for him—and volunteering and participating in his campaign in those places—that they were fighting for someone who was able to stand on his own two feet, even in hostile territory. Talarico is similar when it comes to his willingness to spar about the meaning of Christianity. We’ll see how effective it ends up being at converting Republicans on the religious right.

Does Talarico have any antecedents in the populist movement?

Actually, he reminds me of one of my favorite figures in Red Texas, the Reverend G.G. Hamilton, a Methodist preacher from Cromwell, Texas, who drew crowds advertising his events as debates against socialism. In the course of an incredible speech, he would passionately convert to the socialist position, saying, “Will socialists err? Of course! They’re only human, but I would rather stand with the masses than with the masters.”

What Talarico did in his primary race was test an idea that we never really got to see come to fruition during Bernie Sanders’s second campaign here in Texas. The counties where Talarico did well were places that Bernie did very well during the 2020 presidential primary. Talarico also did well in parts of the state that have been trending to the Republican Party in recent years, including large portions of South Texas which historically had been part of the Democratic Party’s “blue wall.”

That showed a willingness to fight for voters who have been moving away from the Democrats in recent years, and that’s a good orientation. One advantage for Talarico is who he faces in November—either Ken Paxton or John Cornyn, two of the most crooked or disliked people in Texas politics. The buzz is certainly there for Talarico.

We haven’t really talked much about the impact of greater ethnic and religious diversity in Texas today—and the MAGA backlash against it. How are Talarico and other progressives responding to the harassment and demonization of immigrants, whether Latinos, South Asians or Muslims from the Middle East?

It’s really frightening what’s happened here in the past few years with the shift toward MAGA Republicanism. A decade ago, you had Greg Abbott, our current governor, bragging about how many people from all around the world are moving to Texas. I was very proud of that, and held that up as, like, a good thing.

Now, one of the big fixations of the state Republican Party is harassing Muslim civic organizations, including designating both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations a “terrorist organization.” When ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] crackdowns started in Texas, where Anglos are no longer a majority, you could go to Spanish-speaking markets or grocery stores, and they’d be empty. Their customers were afraid to shop, go to work and engage in social life

Many people—especially folks in major cities like Dallas, Houston and Austin, where I live—have been pushing back on this at the community level because the Democratic Party doesn’t have a lot of levers, at the moment, to push back on the state level. There’s been a greater willingness of people involved in campaigns like Talarico’s to speak honestly about ICE and its impact.

When it comes to getting new representation in Congress, we also saw some exciting campaigns in south Texas, including the primary candidacy of my friend Etienne Rosas. The political machine that has controlled the Democratic Party in that area is still very strong. It’s going to take more people doing this work of pushing back, at the local and state level, to make the significant change we need on the federal level.

Steve EarlyMore by this author →

Steve Early has been writing about politics or labor in Vermont since he was an undergraduate at Middlebury College more than fifty years ago. He is a former international union representative for the Communications Workers of America and was involved in organizing, bargaining, and political action by CWA members and other workers throughout New England. He co-founded “Labor for Bernie” and was active in both Sanders for President campaigns. Since moving to the Bay Area, he authored four books, including Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City (Beacon Press) about his new hometown, Richmond, California. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.