John B. Rayner Crucial Moments Term Paper

Rayner's efforts to create Populist alliances with Republicans also suggest that the political life of African-Americans was not simply one of a people struggling against oppression, but that the negotiation of race and politics was considerably more delicate in Texas history than one might immediately surmise. Rayner supported Republican racial policy, but he also believed that Texas and the South needed to support its farmers, and that economic policy should acknowledge agrarian needs.

After the failure of his attempt to create a settlement with the Texas Republicans, the Populist Party began to decline and Rayner returned to the Republican Party. After his affiliation ended with the Populist Party, and the Populist Party folded, Rayner's political career continued, bloodied but not unbowed, although he remained a renegade. He expressed interest in anti-immigration movements and also supported the Texas laws imposing poll taxes and literacy tests on voting rights and suffrage, perhaps embittered by his sense that the majority had often, in his view, been wrong, and hoping that whites of limited political literacy would be prohibited through such legislation. For the rest of his career, Rayner attempted to advance the education of Texas African-Americans through education. He conducted fundraising for vocational education for blacks, including Conroe College and the Farmers' Improvement Society School, but these were based on the Booker T. Washington model of black education, not like the education that Rayner aspired to as a young man. Still, although by no means thoroughly typical of African-American politicians or a wholly blameless hero in his efforts, because of his fierce independence, whether one agrees with him or not, one could say that Rayner was typically 'Texan' in his renegade political career.

Works Cited

Patrick, L. "Texas Populism." University of Texas at Austin. History 1693. 21 Mar 2008. http://www2.austincc.edu/lpatrick/his1693/popul.htm