achieved an amazing thing in just a little more than a generation after being slaves and coming on the wantage with not even owning the clothing on their back literally. they achieved status of middle-class and they achieve political leadership and power. they have social standing and they have economic wealth. it got the reputation of to come to work if you are black. they were skilled artisans in cotton mills so it was a great place and it was a thriving black middle-class predictive political power from the democrats in those days democrats or republicans and the reverse. in 1898 the democratic party decided they would quote unquote take back their cities from what they thought of as black domination. this was their way of putting it and they wanted to take back all the electoral offices that would be coming up in 1898 which included a lot of state offices but it didn't include city council what was called the board for the mayor. what they did was they sat shotgun at the polling booth literally people stealing ballot boxes and so forth and leading up to that they had a war of words and the