But the Knights stuck together. The union spread throughout the country during the 1880s, boasting seven hundred thousand members at its peak, including many southern chapters where an estimated one-third to one-half of its members were Black. But its reign lasted only a decade as the 1890s saw the birth of Jim Crow, the end of Black-white fusion politics under Reconstruction, and the promotion of white supremacy as a cultural and political force to unite whites across class.
