The Real Racial System Of The Old South

Thus, disparities in wealth—manifested in daily material realities—only exacerbated class tensions during the late antebellum period. It became clear to poorer whites that the privileges of whiteness were class-specific. By studying housing, diet, sexuality, marriage, family, religion, and honor, it becomes quite obvious that the lives of poor whites were vastly different from the lives of the more affluent Southerners. This distinction between classes of whites was extremely pronounced in heavy slave areas and seemed most intense in the Deep South’s cities and the plantation belt…

This grave economic stratification between masters and non-masters meant that in material terms, the poorest southern whites lived somewhat similarly to slaves. Historians have shown that slaves’ material lives were not that far off from those of European peasants. As valuable property, though, slaves were generally protected from severe hunger and starvation. It was in the master’s best economic interests to keep their workers fed and healthy, and many of the wealthier planters regularly employed a physician to help sick and injured slaves heal and recover. Poor whites owned very little property and rarely had access to actual cash, and often scraped together a meager living based on bare subsistence. As Fredrika Breamer remarked, poor whites “live in the woods, without churches, without schools, without hearths, and sometimes also without homes.” Despite their scanty belongings, many of the impoverished seemed to preserve some sense of honor, she concluded, as they remained “independent and proud in their own way.”

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The presence of the underground economy only strengthened slave-holders desire to keep slaves and poor whites separate. In fact, the southern gentry often encouraged their slaves to loathe poor whites; if blacks felt superior to poor white, masters hoped, they would likely avoid having regular contact with them. In the few decades before secession, slaves regularly ridiculed poor whites, even face to face. Henry Bibb, a fugitive slave, wrote that poor whites “were generally ignorant, intemperate, licentious, and profane.” Eugene Genovese theorized that it was probably the slaves who dubbed the poor whites ‘trash’ because blacks considered them ‘the laziest and most dissolute people on earth.”…

Telling slave children that they needed to act socially “better than” or “above” poor whites surely challenged slave owner teachings of inherent racial inequality. This type of hierarchy—predicated on ever more complicated formulas of race and class—likely caused many blacks to reflect on their master’s pro-slavery theories based on the notion of white racial superiority. These concepts became less and less convincing with the unavoidable recognition of the South’s white poor. Ella Kelly, enslaved in South Carolina, attempted to make sense of the regions competing prejudices against both blacks and poor whites. Kelly proposed that “there are three kinds of people. Lowest down is a layer of white folks, then in the middle is a layer of colored folks and on the top is the cream, a layer of good white folks. Suspect it’ll be that way ‘till Judgment Day.”

-excerpted from “Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South” by Keri Leigh Merritt (2017)