Colored Farmers' National Alliance Founded 1886

The Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union was founded in Texas in 1886, growing to an estimated 1.2 million members by 1891. It established cooperative stores, cotton gins, and exchanges to help Black farmers escape crop-lien dependency. The Alliance was met with violence: in 1891, fifteen Black laborers organizing a cotton pickers' strike in Lee County, Arkansas were killed by a posse.