Frank Burkitt
Frank Burkitt was a prominent political figure and leader of the Populist Party in Mississippi, born in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, to a family of English immigrants. He had a diverse background, including military service as a captain in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, followed by a career in farming, education, and law. Initially a Democrat, Burkitt represented Chickasaw County in the Mississippi legislature and played a significant role in the state constitutional convention of 1890, where he opposed measures that disenfranchised many voters, including poor whites.
Burkitt became a voice for Mississippi's rural poor, advocating against the oppressive crop lien system through his connections with the Farmers' Alliance and by editing a reform newspaper. His activism included supporting the subtreasury plan to provide farmers with better credit conditions. Despite facing violence and setbacks in his political campaigns, including a gubernatorial run in 1895 and a bid for Congress, Burkitt remained a key figure in the Populist movement. He later rejoined the Democrats and continued to serve in various legislative roles until his death in 1914. Burkitt's legacy reflects the complexities of political and social struggles in the post-Reconstruction South.
Subject Terms
Frank Burkitt
- Frank Burkitt
- Born: July 15, 1843
- Died: 1914
Populist party leader of Mississippi, was born in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, the descendant of English immigrants to North Carolina in the eighteenth century. He attended schools and academies in Tennessee and Virginia. He worked as a clerk and bookkeeper in a store for three years and at the outbreak of the Civil War enlisted in the Ninth Battalion of the Confederate Army’s Tennessee Cavalry, in which he attained the rank of captain. Mustered out in May 1865, he farmed and taught school in Alabama and Mississippi, read law, and was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1872.
Burkitt entered politics as a Democrat and was elected to represent Chickasaw County in the state legislature in 1885 and again in 1887. He was a delegate to the historic state constitutional convention of 1890 that established white supremacy by means of a literacy requirement for voters. Because the literacy also disenfranchised some 50,000 illiterate whites, Burkitt opposed it in a declaration before the convention: “This constitution deprives many poor men of the right to vote, one of whom was my comrade in the army and... saved my life. My right hand shall fall palsied to my side before I put my signature to such a document.”
Burkitt became a spokesman for Mississippi’s rural poor, both white and black, who were devastated by the crop lien system that kept them in perpetual debt to the merchants who supplied them with credit on extortionate terms. He became a member first of the Grange and then of the Farmers’ Alliance and took on the editorship of a reform newspaper, the Chickasaw Messenger, published in Okolona, Mississippi. Throughout the 1880s he constantly attacked the Bourbon, or Redeemer, Democrats, who represented the planters’ interests and who had controlled the state since the end of Reconstruction. In 1886, when the state’s coffers were almost empty, he accused the Redeemers of irresponsibility, incompetence, and corruption in a pamphlet entitled The Wool Hat.
As state lecturer of the Farmers’ Alliance, Burkitt favored the subtreasury plan proposed by Alliance president Charles W. Macune, which was introduced to Mississippi voters in the campaign of 1891. Under this plan, farmers who stored their crops in federally owned warehouses would receive certificates worth up to 80 percent of the value of the crop and would be able to use these certificates as legal tender until the crop was sold, thus attaining the objectives of credit, an inflated currency, and some control over marketing. In addition to writing editorials on behalf of the senatorial candidate who favored the subtreasury plan, Burkitt made numerous speeches to audiences of farmers, with such telling effect that by early autumn of 1891 the Alliance candidate and the representative of the Bourbon Democrats were running neck and neck. Then, in October, night riders destroyed Burkitt’s presses and burned his building; they also broke into the courthouse and stole the voter registration books. Although Burkitt rebuilt his printing office, the Alliance campaign suffered enough of a setback to give the Bourbon Democrats the victory.
In 1892 Burkitt was elected to the Mississippi Democratic slate of presidential electors, but after the Democrats nominated Grover Cleveland he resigned, gave his support to the Populist candidate, General James B. Weaver, and ran for Congress on the Populist ticket. This campaign too was marked by violence, and Burkitt hired two bodyguards. Although his election had at first been considered a certainty, he lost by a two-to-one margin.
The elections of 1895 were the first real test of Populist strength in Mississippi, because the 1890 constitution had extended the terms of state officers until January 1896. At the state convention of the People’s party, Burkitt was unanimously nominated for governor. Because of his extensive lecturing for the Farmers’ Alliance and his membership in the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and other fraternal organizations, he was said to be personally known to more people in the state than anyone else. He was a man of commanding appearance, tireless energy, and great ability as a speaker.
Burkitt’s gubernatorial campaign speeches denounced the banks, the railroads and other corporations, and the labor and monetary policies of the Cleveland administration. He emphasized the extravagance and incompetence of the Regular Democrats at the state level, and his belief that poor whites were the indirect victims of measures designed to oppress blacks.
Attacking the giveaway of three million acres of land that had been set aside for the public schools, Burkitt accused the Democrats of planning to change the school laws in such a way “as to practically destroy the colored schools of the state and when this is done it will require one more step to abrogate the schools of the poor whites in the country.” He went on to pledge that he would keep the schools open at least four months a year “for the equal benefit of all the children of the state without regard to race, color or condition in life.” At the polls the Democrats won an overwhelming victory that crushed populism in Mississippi; Burkitt carried only one county and only two Populists were elected to the state legislature.
At the 1896 national convention of the People’s party, Burkitt was a contender for the vice presidential nomination but lost to Thomas E. Watson of Georgia. Like many of his party, Burkitt reluctantly accepted the Populists’ nomination of Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan on the mistaken assumption that the Democrats would withdraw their vice-presidential nominee in favor of Watson. When the Democrats repudiated Watson, Burkitt became a prominent member of the middle-of-the-road, or nonfusionist, wing of the People’s party and held that position through the election of 1908, when he supported Thomas E. Watson for president.
In 1899 Burkitt declined the Populist nomination for governor. After reaffiliating with the Democrats, he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1907 and in 1911 to the state senate, in which he served as chairman of the Committee on Finance in the 1912-14 session. Burkitt died in 1914.
Biographical sources include W. D. McCain, “The Populist Party in Mississippi” (master’s thesis, University of Mississippi, 1931); N. Pollack, The Populist Mind (1968); and L. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in American History (1978).