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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the late 1880s, the South was still working out what freedom would mean a generation after the Civil War. Around Tarboro, most Black residents worked the land β as tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and hired hands β inside an economy that kept wealth and power in very few hands.
Nationally, this was the Gilded Age, a time of booming industry and stark inequality that gave rise to the first great American labor movements. Working people, Black and white, began to organize to demand a fairer share of what their labor produced.
In the rural South, that impulse collided with the hardening lines of racial segregation. Any effort to organize Black farmworkers, or to build alliances across the color line, ran against the grain of the region's politics β which makes what happened here all the more remarkable.
People & events
Between 1886 and 1890, Black farmworkers in this region affiliated with the Knights of Labor, the largest and most inclusive labor organization of its day. Unlike many unions of the era, the Knights welcomed workers regardless of race, trade, or gender, and at its height it drew hundreds of thousands of members nationwide.
That this movement took root among Black agricultural laborers in eastern North Carolina β and that a state convention was held right here in Tarboro in 1890 β speaks to real organizing courage. These were workers with little formal power banding together to bargain for better conditions and a stronger voice.
Their organizing did not end at the factory gate or the field's edge. It fed directly into the political realm, helping to lay the groundwork for what would become the Fusion movement β an unusual coalition that briefly upended the state's politics.
Its place in the American story
The Fusion movement that grew partly out of this labor organizing was one of the boldest experiments in biracial democracy in the post-Reconstruction South. It brought together a coalition of Populists and Republicans that, in the 1890s, managed to win real political power in North Carolina.
For a few years, Black and white voters cooperated at the ballot box in ways that were almost unimaginable elsewhere in the region β electing officials and challenging the established order. It showed, however briefly, that the color line in Southern politics was not inevitable.
That this experiment was later violently overturned only underscores what was at stake. The organizing that began among farmworkers here is a reminder that ordinary Southern laborers, Black and white, once built coalitions powerful enough to frighten the powerful β a chapter of American history too often left out of the story.
If you visit
Tarboro is a town that wears its history well, and this marker asks you to look past the quiet present to a moment of real ferment. There is nothing dramatic to photograph here β the significance is in what the ground remembers, not in what you can see.
Stand for a moment and picture a convention of farmworkers gathering in this town in 1890, people who worked someone else's land all week organizing for a better deal and, soon, for a voice in who governed them. It is a scene that cuts against every easy assumption about the Gilded Age South.
If you are exploring eastern North Carolina's layered past, pair this stop with the town's broader historic district and let the contrast sink in. This is a marker that rewards a little reading beforehand and a little reflection while you are here.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the markerβs inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- Β· Knights of Labor state convention
- Β· Fusion movement
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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George H. White 1852β1918
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Anna Easter Brown 1879β1957
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