Knights of Labor
Tarboro, Edgecombe County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Knights Of Labor. Black farmworkers in region affiliated with labor union, 1886-1890. Precursor to the Fusion movement. State convention held here, 1890.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
Between 1886 and 1890 Black farmworkers in this region joined the Knights of Labor, the era's largest and most inclusive labor organization, and hosted a state convention here in 1890. Their organizing fed directly into the Fusion movement, the biracial coalition of Populists and Republicans that briefly won power in 1890s North Carolina. It was a rare moment of interracial political alliance in the Gilded Age South.
Why it matters
It shows Black Southern workers building the labor and political coalitions that produced one of the era's boldest experiments in biracial democracy.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- Β· Knights of Labor state convention
- Β· Fusion movement
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Operation Dixie
Nash County, NC
In 1946 Black "leaf house" workers who graded and processed tobacco in eastern North Carolina organized to demand better pay and conditions, casting the region's first pro-union vote at a factory just west of here. The drive was part of Operation Dixie, the postwar labor campaign to unionize the South. Historians see these worker mobilizations as an early seedbed for the civil rights movement that followed.
George H. White 1852β1918
Tarboro, NC
George H. White represented North Carolina's majority-Black "Second District" in the U.S. House from 1897 to 1901, a seat carved out during Reconstruction that sent several Black congressmen to Washington. When White left office, no Black Southerner would sit in Congress again for 72 years, as disfranchisement and Jim Crow closed the door. He lived two blocks east of this spot.
Freedom Hill / Princeville
Princeville, NC
In 1865, as the Civil War ended, freed African Americans established a community here on low ground near the Tar River known as Freedom Hill. In 1885 it was incorporated as Princeville, recognized as one of the oldest towns chartered by African Americans in the United States. The settlement grew from the hopes of emancipation into a self-governing town.
Anna Easter Brown 1879β1957
Edgecombe County, NC
In 1908 Anna Easter Brown helped found Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Greek-letter sorority established by and for African American women, born at Howard University as Black students built their own institutions of leadership and service. A history teacher by profession, Brown embodied the era's belief that education and organization were paths to uplift. Her grave lies a quarter mile east.