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Populist farmer elected president of Texas Farmers' Alliance
On this day in 1887, Evan Jones, farmer and populist leader, was elected
president of the Texas Farmers' Alliance. The Kentucky native was
farming in Erath County, Texas, by 1876 and joined the Texas Farmers'
Alliance by 1883. He was president of the Erath County Farmers' Alliance
from 1884 to 1888. In 1886 he led an independent ticket to victory in
the county elections. On January 18, 1887, the Texas Farmers' Alliance
elected him president, and he served until the fall of 1888, when he was
elected president of the rapidly expanding Farmers' and Laborers' Union
of America, the product of the merger of the Agricultural Wheel and the
Farmers' Alliance. In the fall of 1889 he declined to run for national
president again and was reelected president of the Texas Farmers'
Alliance; he served until the fall of 1891. He was again president of
the Texas alliance from 1895 to 1896. Jones's advocacy of political
action on the part of independent farmers and laborers made him an early
leader of the more radical political wing of the Texas alliance. From
1889 to 1891, as president of the Texas alliance, he helped the radicals
persuade numerous members of the alliance in Texas and the South to move
toward third-party politics. He was nominated for governor in July 1888
by the Union Labor party, a precursor of the People's party, but
declined because of his work as alliance president. He joined the
Populist party when it was formed in Texas in 1891, and in 1892 he ran
unsuccessfully for the United States Congress from the Eighth
Congressional District. In 1896 he ran unsuccessfully for railroad
commissioner on the same ticket. He became ill during a speaking trip to
East Texas and died in 1899.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- JONES, EVAN
- FARMERS' ALLIANCE
- PEOPLE'S PARTY
- LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY TEXAS
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Texas historian and author born in Cincinnati (1817)
- Scandal purges body politic (1971)
- Marshall University chartered (1842)
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