by which it would be known for the rest of its existence. The Colored Alliance The Southern Farmers' Alliance was unapologetic about its color bar banning black farmers from membership. The Alliance's National Secretary-Treasurer J.H. Turner, himself the son of a former slave-owner, wrote that in fact the liberated slaves' "worst enemies" had been the Northern carpetbaggers of the Reconstruction era, who "promised each head of family forty acres of land and a mule if only he would vote right." Moreover, Turner noted, the liberated slaves of the South had been promised "social equality with the whites, and a great many other things which, since he has found out better, he neither needs nor wants." Turner argued that relations between the races were fundamentally benevolent now that black farmers had recognized that "his old master" had "almost invariably" been on hand to provide "the best advice" regarding agricultural problems and had very often been the one to "protect and defend him in his business affairs." Such a view of the indebted and impoverished black sharecroppers of the South, also typical of Southern whites of the era, did nothing to reassure African-American farmers that their concerns were shared by their European-American counterparts. With their presence from the Southern Farmers' Alliance barred due to racism, African-American farmers were forced to establish an organization of their own. In December 1886 a group of black farmers organized themselves in Houston County, Texas as the Alliance of Colored Farmers of Texas — forerunner of the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, commonly known as the "Colored Farmers' Alliance." A declaration of principles was adopted which identified the new organization as a mutual aid society dedicated to education, improvement of agricultural efficiency, and the raising of funds for collective benefits for "sick or disabled members, or their distressed families." The initial form of the organization was that of a secret society. In February 1887 the group was chartered under the laws of Texas as the Alliance of Colored Farmers. This was followed by a convention in Lovelady, Texas held on March 14, 1888, at which the group was redefined as national in scope under the name Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union. A national newspaper was launched by the organization called The National Alliance. The organization rapidly spread across the American South, establishing a presence in every Southern state of the union. The Colored