Racial Politics in Central Kentucky during the Post–Reconstruction Era: Bourbon County, 1877–1899

Abstract

Race was a major factor in shaping politics in the postbellum s outh during the late nineteenth century, and it has continued to shape the politics of the region until the present day. From the creation of biracial governance during the Reconstruction era, to Redemption and the rise of the white democratic Party in the 1870s and 1880s, to disfranchisement at the end of nineteenth century in the early twentieth century and the creation of the one-party system, and to reenfranchisement with the Voting Rights act (1965) and the rise of Republican hegemony in our own time, race has been a major factor in shaping southern politics. Partisan alignments and election outcomes, the style of political campaigning, and both the formal and informal electoral rules of various southern states cannot be understood apart from patterns of racial stratification. t he importance of race in shaping past and present southern politics is beyond question. By contrast, historians and political analysts have generally downplayed the historical importance of race as politically consequential in Kentucky and in other border states. t he fact that white Kentuckians often embraced a