Jack of Harts

Nearly 90% of the Texas Republican Party membership was freedmen in the 1870s. It was literally called the Negro Party because of this, though there was a small mixture of Northern Carpetbaggers and Southern Scalawags, what proper Southern gentlemen called those who had been more loyal to the Union than their own Confederacy. Nearly all respectable Southern white gentlemen belonged to the Democrat Party, who of course were only looking to protect the rights and privileges of the State they had helped mold. Unlike the Northerners and their lazy allies who just wanted to buy up the land of loyal locals and turn them out like beggars. The problem for the Republicans was that there were more whites living in Texas than blacks, and as voting rates approached 90% of all eligible voters, despite the violent voter suppression efforts going on, the Democrats simply had more votes to fall back on. They used their majority to enact segregated schools, poll taxes, laws to disallow the carrying of weapons, and other measures designed to make it harder for freedmen to live and vote as other people. And yet the freedmen continued to vote.