Abstract

Although “populism” is a familiar term, it is also a very confused one. Despite the fact there have been populist politics from the Revolutionary period to the present, most people have not accepted its leaders as representatives of either agrarian or social reform. Similarly, while populism and African-Americans are not usually associated, blacks have always supported a “populist style.” Men such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, Booker T. Washington, and Martin Luther King, Jr. always favored the community over the state. Today blacks continue to support populist oriented leaders such as Jesse Jackson, but few of them would characterize these and other leaders as populists.