Keri Leigh Merritt is a historian and author of Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, and a forthcoming biography of the writer/activist Lillian E. Smith.
The worst episode of Reconstruction Era violence occurred 150 years ago today in northern Louisiana. The 1873 Colfax Massacre saw white supremacists slaughter 150 African Americans, brutally thwarting their hopes for autonomy and self-governance.
In Georgia, Republicans have leaned on voter suppression to push their reactionary agenda for years — and now they’re withholding unemployment benefits for pandemic-wracked workers. The only way to stop their pillaging is for poor and working-class Georgians to unite across racial lines, to finally win the economic and social rights they deserve.
From the antebellum period to today, Southern white elites are terrified of poor whites and black workers joining hands — because they know it’s an existential threat to their power.