Word power: keeping poor whites & blacks apart

You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.

 

So said a populist politician, addressing a gathering of black and white labourers.

He – Tom Watson – was speaking in Georgia, in 1892.

As with later populists, Watson proved breathtakingly inconsistent and shamelessly opportunistic.

In 1892 he was advocating for blacks’ enfranchisement and urging poor blacks and poor whites to unite and rise up against the elites.

In 1908 he was the Populist Party’s Presidential candidate, as a white supremacist.

I “discovered” Watson via his appearance in Keeping Poor Whites & Blacks Apart: a Southern Tradition, by Keri Leigh Merritt.

Her essay mostly instances/addresses the antebellum South; she robustly challenges commonly held notions about the alleged “docility” of its underclasses, both black and white.

However, Merritt offers more than a hint that an understanding of how the Old South “worked” may assist our understanding of how things “work”, right now.

Click here to read the full text.

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