Non-Elite Whites
For discussion
How did non-elite survive?
How varied was the non-elite group?
Did it vary from region to region and between rural and urban?
How did elite and non-elite get along?
Were there privileges of whiteness to which all whites had access to?
Readings
There is less written about non-elite whites, but you should all try to read these items:
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Charles C. Bolton, Poor whites of the antebellum South: tenants and labourers in central
North Carolina and northeast Mississippi -
Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: yeoman households, gender relations, and the political culture of the antebellum
South Carolina lowcountry. -
Susanna Delfino and Gillespie, Michele (eds), Neither lady nor slave: working women of the old south
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E. Genovese, 'Yeoman farmers in a slaveholders democracy', Ag. Hist, XLIX, (1975), 331-342.
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J. William Harris, Plain folk and gentry in a slave society
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J. Wayne Flynt, Dixie's forgotten people: the South's poor whites.
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Frank Lawrence Owsley, Plain folk of the old South.
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Samuel Hyde (Ed), Plain Folk of the South Revisited