 The Red Shirts were part of a Democratic campaign to oppose the interracial coalition of Republicans and Populists, which had gained control of the state legislature in the 1894 election and elected a Republican governor in 1896.Such biracial coalitions had also occurred in other states across the South, in some cases overturning or threatening white Democratic control of state legislatures.Upper-class and middle-class white populations feared the empowerment of freedmen and poor whites.