Newspaper Page Text
Page. 8
Flagpole Magazine
December 4, 1991
Ghost Fry by John Seawright
Rattling the Chains,
Part 2: The Knights of Labor in Athens, 1886
Athens’ Knights of Labor made a very good showing in
the December 1385 city elections. Barely three months old,
they polled 43.7% of the 972 votes cast for mayor (my
estimate of the turnout in last week's column was too high)
and elected an alderman. The conservative victors were
quick to throw their weight around. The first to feel it were
Athens’ six policeman, all but one of whom had supported
the K of L. Three of them were fired at the first council
meeting of 1886. John W. Black was also feeling the big
boys’ wrath. Black was the mill supervisor who lost his job
for refusing to quit the K of L. After several months Black still
could not find work in Athens. K of L officials, including
national leader Terence V. Powderly, wrote mill president
R. L. Bloomfield in Black’s behalf, but the boss was un
moved. Black had worked in the mayoral campaign and
filed complaints against seven prominent Athenians for
vote buying. In April the grand jury threw out the charges
and ordered Black arrested and fined $48 (a month’s pay
at his old job) for having made the complaint. Black’s luck
finally changed in August when he got a mill job in Green
ville, S.C. at $1.75 a day, 25 cents less than his old pay.
The triumphant conservatives were busy iaymg down
their party line. Alderman Larry Gantt, publisher of the
Banner, alternately declared the Knights dead and fulmi
nated against them. Alderman H. C. White, professor of
chemistry and agricultural science and self-professed
"friend of the colored people” during the election, was get
ting statewide raves for his speech in Columbus in which he
labelled blacks as “shiftless, ignorant... [having] a low state
of morality" and proposed driving them off the land and
replacing them with a white “peasantry."
Labor was on everyone’s mind in the summer of 1886 as
the nation experienced it biggest wave of strikes and read
the daily reports of the trial of Chicago’s socialist and
anarchist Haymarket “conspirators." Closer home, the
Augusta mill owners had shut down their factories, and their
city’s economy, to preclude a general strike. The UGA
commencement address that July was “Socialism, the
Storm Cloud of the 19th Century." Hon. Walter Hill of Macon
praised the Knights of Labor’s “conservative and lawful
methods" but expressed fear over the politicization of "the
vast number of unemployed men in this country."
The Athens K of L stayed busy. On May 8 a delegation
went down to High Shoals to address the workers at Mayor
Reaves’s factory. The speakers included Dr. William G.
Lowry and John W. Black. They signed up two dozen new
members and made plans for a High Shoals chapter, but
two nights later the president of the mill addressed all the
hands and warned them off of having any further business
with the Knights.
On the night of Saturday, June 12 the workers of Athens’
Elevator Mills walked off the job demanding 10 cents an
hour for night work. The owner refused, fired the strikers,
and had their places filled by Monday morning. This strike,
like the others in Athens that year, was more or less spon
taneous and conducted outside the auspices of the K of L,
whose charter sanctioned strikes only as a last resort.
On August 22 the Athens Knights of Labor celebrated
their first anniversary. After one year they had 800 mem
bers, about one fifth of the city’s adult population. The an
niversary supper at their Broad Street meeting hall was ac
companied by speeches and music. We can only specu
late as to whether the black Knights were invited along with
their white brethren, probably not, considering the favor
able notice given the evening by the Banner.
During the first week of September a hundred workers
struck the Princeton mill, shutting it down. Workers in the
weave room had complained of negligence and favoritism
on the part of their supervisor, Joel Dean. Dean said he
would res.gn if a majority of the weavers wanted him out.
Only six out of twenty weavers voted against him, but these
six went throughout the rest of the mill asking for a show of
solidarity. They got it. The mill shut down, Dean quit, and the
strikers returned to work.
Any attempt at racial power
sharing was attacked in the press
as “negro domination
The election for Clarke county’s state representative
was set for October 6 and the Knights of Labor candidate,
Dr. William G. Lowry, was a bona fide member of the order,
unlike mayoral candidate Wood. Lowry was up against a
wealthy and popular two-term incumbent, Richard B. Russell
(father of Senator Russell for whom all those buildings on
campus are named). The race was complicated by the
candidacy of George T. Murrell, a prosperous farmer from
near Winterville. Murrell was a perennially unsuccessful
candidate whose main plank was that lawyers had too
much political influence and farmers too little.
These were the days before primary or runoff elections
and winner take all was the rule. The Knights' strategy was
simple: sit tight and let the conservatives split along town
vs. country lines One week before the election the Banner
played the conservatives’ favorite card:
The news was afloat on the street yesterday that the
negroes of Athens had met and nominated Abe Tucker, a
colored man of this city, as their candidate for the legisla
ture... The meeting seemed to have been secret as we
could learn nothing authentic. .. there are now three white
candidates in the field. This will certainly give the negroes
the balance of power ... This is the danger we have long
predicted. .. There is yet time for the whites to meet and
nominate a candidate, but if they fail to do this Tucker will
in all probability be the winning horse.
The rumor was. predictably, false, but it did draw atten
tion to the split in the conservative ranks. Dr. Lowry was
unconcerned: he went about his medical practice while
Russell and Murrell slung mud at each other.
Turnout for the election was lower than expected.
Russell’s early lead was eroded by the workers’ dinner hour
votes, but it was clear that many Murrell loyalists had gone
over to Russell. At the end of the day the totals were Russell
652(50.9%), Lowry 462(36.2%), and Murrell 161 (12 6%)
According to the Banner, only seven white Knights voted
for Russell, but large black defections from the K of L gave
him the election. The Banner called for a primary to be es
tablished, ostensibly to prevent the “crying evil" of vote
buying. Some of Russell’s black vote may have been
bought, but there were rumors that the black Knights were
growing disgruntled with their white brethren’s hogging of
nominations and would desert the K of L in the city elections
should they not field a racially balanced ticket.
On November 11, Athens had its last strike of 1886 The
fair was in town and Mr Bloomfield had denied the request
of the mill’s bobbin boys for time off to attend. These boys
were paid 35 cents a day to carry bobbins to and from the
machine operators. All fifteen of them decided to give
themselves a holiday and the mill shut down for several
hours until replacements were found. On their return to
work the two ringleaders were identified and fired
The Athens city election was scheduled for Decemoer
1. William Wood was again endorsed by the K of L The
businessmen's candidate was Berry Hodgson, who claimed
he would not buy a single vote. Wood presented himself as
a conservative, attacking Lowry’s campaign against Russell.
He lost 280 to 540, carrying the working class first ward by
only 3 out of 273 votes. Hodgson’s vote was almost the
same as Reaves’s had been a year earlier, but Wood's
support dropped 41% Wood bitterly denounced what he
saw as his betrayal by the workers and pledged his full
future support to the conservatives. In later life he went on
to become water works superintendent and city treasurer
The Knights of Labor were finished in Athens. Nation
ally, the order was plagued by poor organization, increas
ingly sophisticated opposition by employers, and the
wavering leadership of the conservative, egocentric T V
Powderly. In Athens, as throughout the South, white work
ers were unwilling to give more than lip service—if even
that— to black aspirations. Any attempt at racial power
sharing was attacked in the press as “negro domination .'
White workers were scared away and black workers
dropped out in disappointment and disgust.
In 1888 Clarke became one of the first counties in the
state to adopt a white primary election, effectively neutral
izing black political power for two generations. Dr. Lowry
died about this time. The 1889 city directory lists his three
daughters as employees of the Bloomfield mills.
The Knights of Labor, the Independent Democrats be
fore them, and the People’s Party after were popular revolts
against the tyranny of capital. All had enthusiastic support
in the South; all failed from overreliance on electoral poli
tics, a desire to appear conservative and respectable, and
most of all, from the old unwillingness to put class over race
Next Week. The Hermit of Graves Mountain.
Copyright 1991 John Seawright
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