Keri Leigh MerrittEvery podcast appearance, updated as new ones drop

Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived with her lover, Paula, first running a summer camp in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and then a magazine devoted to creating a new vision of the South, one that passionately championed equality and integration. Smith published Black and white writers, a rare feat in those days, and herself wrote articles instructing white Southerners on why they shouldn’t support segregation—Smith firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too. In 19...

Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived with her lover, Paula, first running a summer camp in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and then a magazine devoted to creating a new vision of the South, one that passionately championed equality and integration. Smith published Black and white writers, a rare feat in those days, and herself wrote articles instructing white Southerners on why they shouldn’t support segregation—Smith firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too. In 19...

Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived with her lover, Paula, first running a summer camp in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and then a magazine devoted to creating a new vision of the South, one that passionately championed equality and integration. Smith published Black and white writers, a rare feat in those days, and herself wrote articles instructing white Southerners on why they shouldn’t support segregation—Smith firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too. In 19...

Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived with her lover, Paula, first running a summer camp in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and then a magazine devoted to creating a new vision of the South, one that passionately championed equality and integration. Smith published Black and white writers, a rare feat in those days, and herself wrote articles instructing white Southerners on why they shouldn’t support segregation—Smith firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too. In 19...

THIS IS AN UNLOCKED BONUS EPISODE. To get access to all bonus episodes and support the show sign up at patreon.com/leftreckoning The relationship between capitalism, slavery, and democracy in the South is complex. Slavery was a form of unfree labor that prevented labor power and competition, which hindered the development of a capitalist system. The failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War and the subsequent rise of Jim Crow laws further entrenched the power of the ruling class in the South and suppressed the political and economic power of Black people and poor whites. To address the challenges in the South, a new reconstruction is needed, one that focuses on grassroots activism, community support, and addressing the systemic issues that have perpetuated inequality and underdevelopment. Historian Keri Leigh Merritt (@KeriLeighMerrit) joins us to discuss her recent piece in Aeon Magazine on underdevelopment in the American South from plantation slavery to today. https://aeon.co/essays/capitalism-and-underdevelopment-in-the-american-south 00:00 Introduction and Overview 00:53 The Underdevelopment of the South 05:09 Capitalism, Slavery, and Democracy 09:13 The Failure of Reconstruction and the Rise of Jim Crow 15:01 The Impact of Federal Programs 25:53 The Fight over the New History of Capitalism 28:36 Conclusion and Call to Action

Keri Leigh and I hash out some of her ideas recently featured in the Smithsonian article: "Why We Need a New Civil War Documentary" and also Punk Rock music. Because why not.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This segment of the interview was recorded while I was still traveling around for field season & didn’t have access to the usual recording setup. Everything's perfectly audible but the sound quality is a little rustic. iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/farm-to-taber/id1418015843?mt=2 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/farm-to-taber-podcast RSS subscribe: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:432549147/sounds.rss Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5610560 Donate: https://paypal.me/farmtotaber Twitter: https://twitter.com/farmtotaberpod?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FarmToTaber/ • Books, organizations, websites, etc mentioned during the podcast The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty: https://thecookinggene.com/ The lettuce harvester tool Sarah was talking about: it’s so well-meant and it's the worst piece of farm equipment I’ve ever seen in my life. Lord help us all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPIfw5_WoLU Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft. A must-read book by a therapist on how abusive men keep people under their thumbs, and why most of them don’t change: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/289845/why-does-he-do-that-by-lundy-bancroft/9780425191651/ Oregon wine grape growers providing funds for farmworker health care: https://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/2011/08/health_care_comes_to_vineyard.html

Keri Leigh Merritt is a historian who studies how white supremacy fucks over everyone including white people. We had a good time. iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/farm-to-taber/id1418015843?mt=2 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/farm-to-taber-podcast RSS subscribe: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:432549147/sounds.rss Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5610560 Donate: https://paypal.me/farmtotaber Twitter: https://twitter.com/farmtotaberpod?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FarmToTaber/ Books, organizations, websites, etc mentioned during the podcast Masterless Men by Dr Keri Leigh Merritt: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/masterless-men/4DA0CAD8D061BD3681AB01EFF24D6D44 Nobody Should Be Talking About Beto and Gillum in 2020 Until We Understand Stacey Abrams in 2018: from The Root about Stacey Abrams’s boom in support among rural white voters. https://www.theroot.com/nobody-should-be-talking-about-beto-and-gillum-in-2020-1831061434 Case and Deaton paper on shortening life expectancies among white non-Hispanic Americans: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/casetextsp17bpea.pdf

Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Keri Leigh Merritt reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor. With the rising global demand for cotton - and thus, slaves - in the 1840s and 1850s, the need for white laborers in the American South was drastically reduced, creating a large underclass who were unemployed or underemployed. These poor whites could not compete - for jobs or living wages - with profitable slave labor. Though impoverished whites were never subjected to the daily violence and degrading humiliations of racial slavery, they did suffer tangible socio-economic consequences as a result of living in a slave society. Merritt examines how these 'masterless' men and women threatened the existing Southern hierarchy and ultimately helped push Southern slaveholders toward secession and civil war. Keri Leigh Merritt works as an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her B.A. in History and Political Science from Emory University and her M.A. and Ph.D. (2014) in History from the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on race and class in U.S. history. Merritt’s work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards. Her first book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. She has also co-edited a book on southern labor history with Matthew Hild, Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (2018), and is currently conducting research for books on radical black resistance during Reconstruction, and on the role of sheriffs and police in the nineteenth century South. In her spare time, Keri Leigh loves to read, listen to music (everything from jazz and rocksteady to old punk rock), and travel. She also writes historical pieces for the public, with letters and essays appearing in Aeon, Bill Moyers, Salon, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Follow Keri Leigh on Twitter: @kerileighmerrit.

Why discuss poor whites when thinking about race and class in nineteenth-century America and beyond? In this dialogue between literary studies and history Matthew Teutsch (Auburn University) and Keri Leigh Merritt (Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (Cambridge UP, 2017)) talk about how wealthy white landowners manipulated the antiblackness of poor whites in the antebellum period, the image of poor whites in the cultural imagination, and the legacies of this racially divisive class warfare today. They discuss interdisciplinarity in the field, the effective use of archives in pedagogy, and academics on social media. Episode produced by Matthew Teutsch.

Keri Leigh Merritt is the author of Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South. Keith and Keri Leigh Merritt discuss the link between economic hardship and the spread of racism throughout American history.