 In 1891, after the split over the elections bill, the Colored Alliance called a general strike of black cotton-pickers to demand a wage increase from 50 cents to $1 per hundred pounds of cotton.The white Farmers' Alliance, whose membership in the South included large numbers of landowners employing sharecroppers, were the most vehement opponents of the proposed strike.The "Progressive Farmer", paper of Farmers Alliance President Leonidas L. Polk, urged “our farmers to leave their cotton in the field rather than pay more than 50 cents per hundred to have it picked.” 

The leadership of the Colored Alliance lacked the resources to mobilize the vast majority of sharecroppers who were illiterate or semi-literate and lacked alternative sources of income.