American commentators long saw populism as tied to the nineteenth-century biracial movement

Evidence

Until recently, Americans appeared immune to this trend. Tied to their original nineteenth-century experience, US commentators found it difficult to apply the word “populist” to the species of politician emerging in Europe. In the 1960s, Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King and Bayard Rustin could still look back on the original populism as a noteworthy chapter in the people’s history of the United States. More concretely, King referenced the original Populists’ biracial efforts in speeches at the 1965 Selma march. Figures such as Ross Perot, Ronald Reagan, or Michael Dukakis might have been disparaged with the epithet in the 1990s. Beyond the Washington bubble, however, “populism” had not lost its radical luster. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 69

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader reading on the civil-rights era and race—e.g. base-station and Islamophobia materials around King. MLK citing the 1890s biracial Populist alliance at Selma is a concrete fact worth holding. — connects to: Gilded Age agrarian populists combined speculative imagination with nativism and racism — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 439; The word populism originated with American Midwest farmers, not Europe — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 58

Broader Connections

• Gilded Age agrarian populists combined speculative imagination with nativism and racism #complicates (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 439
• The word populism originated with American Midwest farmers, not Europe #contradicts (0.80) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 58