Image: cover of Keri Leigh Merritt’s essential book Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South.
“…the plight of the white working-class throughout the world today is directly traceable to Negro slavery in America…” W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction.
BOOKS
Elizabeth Catte: What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia.
Kenneth D. Durr: Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980.
Elizabeth D. Esch & David R. Roediger: The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History.
Neil Foley: The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture.
Jeff Forret: Race Relations at the Margins: Slaves and Poor Whites in the Antebellum Southern Countryside.
Arlie Russell Hochschild: Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right.
Nancy Isenberg: White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.
Annalee Newitz & Matt Wray (editors): White Trash: Race and Class in America.
Keri Leigh Merritt: Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South.
David R. Roediger: The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.
Matt Wray: Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness.
Robert Wuthnow: The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America.
ARTICLES
The African American Intellectual Historical Society: Online Roundtable: Keri Leigh Merritt’s “Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South.”
- Introduction to the roundtable.
- Jeff Forret: The Politics of Poor Whiteness.
- Michael Landis: Antebellum Law and the Southern Justice System.
- Keri Leigh Merritt: Writing on Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South.
- Jessica Parr: Race, Economics, and the Persistence of Slavery.
- Chad Pearson: Exposing the Primary Agents and Beneficiaries of Racism.
- Adrienne Petty: Pushing the Dual Emancipation Thesis Beyond its Troublesome Origins.
- Calvin Schermerhorn: In the Shadows of Slavery’s Capitalism.
Steven V. Ash. Poor Whites in the Occupied South, 1861-1865.
Anne Case and Angus Deaton: Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century.
Elizabeth Catte:
- Historian Makes Case For ‘What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia’ In New Book.
- Appalachia Isn’t Trump Country.
- Many more articles at her website.
Ta-Nehisi Coates: ‘A Species of Labor We Do Not Want’.
Code Switch: Why Is It Still OK To ‘Trash’ Poor White People?
Keri Leigh Merritt:
- Writing on Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South.
- A Dual Emancipation: How Black Freedom Benefited Poor Whites.
- Poor Whites Have Been Written out of History for a Very Political Reason.
- Keeping Poor Whites & Blacks Apart: a Southern Tradition.
- White Supremacy in the Age of Trump: Never forget that this country has a long history of upper-class whites using racism to their advantage.
- Interview with Robin Lindley.
David Roediger: collection of interviews and articles.
Thomas J. Sugrue: A Look at America’s Long and Troubled History of White Poverty.