>> charles bolton, author of the book "poor whites of the antebellum south. >> there have been books written about all groups in the south. planners, non-slaveholding farmers. and of course, slaves. but there hasn't been much written about the poorest white groups in the south. them as people that are landless and sleeveless. they represent anywhere from 20% to 40% of the white population. and very little had been written about these.

i wanted to see what i could find out. to add to the story of what life was like. central north carolina includes greensboro. and northeast mississippi. they are looking at a very focused area in the hopes that they can start to identify some real individuals that might belong to this social class. looking at papers of wealthier people. sometimes there would even be letters. they oftentimes were illiterate. north carolina had an insolvent debtor's law. apply to take the benefits of this law. it gave me information about these people's lives. and i've gotten information in

criminal records because one of the places where they became visible was when they became prosecuted for various crimes and a little bit of a problematic source because most of the people i was talking about were not criminals, but they shared some of the same whatt of life in terms of they did for jobs and what their family relationships were like. i had very few voices of these people. a lot of what i have is looking at their circumstances are these various records. the book starts off as an amazing story. i did find one autobiography of a poor white and. one of the things that has made the study of slavery so rich in many ways is we have this

wonderful slave narrative that they recorded in the 30's. much or have as anything like that for the poor whites. edward grew up in a mining town in north georgia. he moved around and looked for work. he cannot make it there. in central north carolina, he took a job in 1859 digging ditches for a local landowner. they got in a dispute about his wage. he murdered the man and was eventually executed. a defense he did, attorney was right here in greensboro and took down his life story. details about,f

for instance, these various jobs he did. very atypical because he was a murderer. i don't really have those kind of voices for those kind of individual personalities that come through the way that he does because those kind of documents don't exist for people in his social class. a lot of fragments i've tried to put together to tell the story. it filled in kind of as a casual labor force. plugging the holes of the needs of people that owned slaves and those that did not. when they were farmers, they farmers were they would pay a share of the crop they made to their landowners.

both of these are more familiar but this existed before the civil war. essentially laborers that were paid their wages and wooden crop. but they also did other things. them would find themselves working in the fields for a few days for a farmer or a planter. sometimes they would be working side-by-side with slaves in the field. they worked on the railroads. a mind. there were mining concerns. and some early lumber mills cotton mills in these areas. but most of their jobs were temporary. obviously, they would be living in whatever kind of dwelling they could throw together. a lot of times, very makeshift. they might be living on a place that was someone that they knew

's land. looking at the property list and the things like the debtor's record. , it was common property kitchen utensils. they had some furniture, but very limited. something that could be easily moved. they had some clothing, but not very much. usually an overcoat or something that you would need in north carolina in the winter. them also had some livestock. and the reason they were able to have livestock was at that time, it was still a system of common rights of land. you didn't only and, your livestock could raise on

other people's land. mostis something that, in of the south, changed after the civil war. you had to put a fence around your crop so nobody could damage your crops. the part that was not actually being used for agriculture was common land and people could use it for their livestock to run around on. it was good to have that because you could provide good meals if you owned a hogger account. they would receive these things as payment. one where they were kind of constantly looking for work. the people that did stay in a is -- is aarea, this

did not get land, they went summer else. people. a group of counties,me of the you would find there are different parts of the county and they are moving around a lot. but very mobile. if one were to describe them more than anything else, they were extremely mobile. i think day, you know, a lot of wealthier white people would look down on them. they would deal with them when they had to. it when they needed some labor. they saw them as a bit of a troubling presence because they were not -- what people were not

supposed to be these dependent and impoverished people. slavery was supposed to lift up all whites. it was seen as a troubling kind of presence. interestingly, black people talk about poor white and there is good evidence there about this cooperation across racial lines. looked cases, blacks down on poor whites as well and felt that they were better off. they sometimes made that comment. that was something that could undermine the whole notion of lavery. if they started to think that they were better than these impoverished white people, i think they were looked down upon. most people above them in the social stem. most whiteay that

southerners characterized them. it wasn't just about economics. part of the poverty as a result of economics, it was cultural. was kind of interesting because you hear the same thing today. it's not that people are poor because it's a bad economic situation but because they are not doing the right things in their personal lives. they are drunkards or they don't have the right family life or something is wrong with them culturally. a lot of whites at the time made that same kind of argument. because of economics, it's partly because they choose to be this way. argumenthe proslavery is that slavery would make it possible for all white then to be independent and to prosper. it was a very big part of the proslavery argument.

northern abolitionists always talked about that slavery basically impoverished all white people. neither one of those was correct. not provide independence for all white men. it provided a good living for lots of planters and lots of landed farmers that were able to make a go of it. but partly, slavery prevented those people from being able to make it economic way. increasingly, it became hard to buy land if you did not have the resources. piedmont,tral agriculture was becoming increasingly commercialized. the railroad was built through here. so you see this kind of dramatic

increase and farmers growing tobacco and growing more wheat. they could sell it to market. there was a rise in the price of land. it was only somewhat difficult for people that did not have resources to get land, it became even more difficult as time went on. and then land was out of the reach of some of the poorest white. if they were in north carolina, some that stayed would be this permanent lower-class that existed. a lot of them went to places like mississippi. that land was perceived as being very valuable. in northeast mississippi, it was

taken from the chickasaw indians. there was supposed to be a government land ale where the land go up for one dollar tree five cents an acre. because the land was perceived as being so valuable, land speculators backed by northern capital and northern companies, they bought out the land and it had already been sold more than once for the government land sale was even held. that. for a five times it made it difficult for the poor whites that were migrating to be able to purchase land. we need to understand all the different social groups. that it ishink important to understand. i hope the book helps people understand the nature of poverty

in american society. economickind of systems that we've had, there have always been people that have been unable to benefit from the systems and people that have been impoverished. strugglesing the within the various economic understand more about the things that lead to people being impoverished. not just temporarily, but over time and the struggles they have to deal with. i hope it provides some understanding of the nature of american poverty. >> we got a look at the world war i propaganda special collection.

at the university of north carolina at greensboro. >> we are in the hodges reading room at the university of north carolina at greensboro. and we will be looking at a collection that is pretty distinct. inr 450 world war i pamphlet our holdings. think really stands out with this collection is that it really runs the gamut of combatant countries. representation of pamphlets. a large collection from the united states. we also have templates from the austro-hungarian empire. and from russia as well. i would like to show a number of