Dispossessing the poor, Part VI - The legacy of slavery and race

I have written five installments about the history of labor and capitalism and have not mentioned slavery. I’m mentioning it now, because it played such a role in both capitalism and labor for much of this country’s history, and its echoes persist (much as our state legislature would like us to pretend they do not).

Slavery was not a factor in the establishment of Jamestown and the Virginia colony in 1607… it first appeared there, and in any English colony, in 1619. In that year, an English ship sailing under the flag of the Dutch (England’s allies) stopped in with wares to sell that it had captured from a Portuguese slave ship, including 20-plus slaves. In 1626, an additional 100 slaves were brought in, and the number grew steadily after that. Nonetheless, in mid-to-late 1600s Virginia, agricultural labor was performed by three groups: white indentured servants, captured Native Americans, and African slaves. The three groups worked side by side, exchanged stories and customs, and frequently intermarried (which, we now know due to genetic testing, is where Melungeons came from).

Bacon’s Rebellion, in 1676, saw white indentured servants, white former indentured servants who could not find land or jobs, former African slaves who’d been freed, and current black slaves join forces against the colonial government. This led the Virginia government to pass laws discouraging white and black laborers from intermingling any further. Interracial marriage was banned, and more laws were passed stripping rights away from blacks - free or slave. Poor whites were told “you are one of us, you are better than THEM.” This was the beginning of laws that reinforced racism, with the goal being to prevent poor whites and blacks from joining together.

By the 1800s, black slaves were doing all the forced labor in the South. This actually hurt poor white workers, as there were fewer job opportunities for them than in the non-slavery North. Some white Southern workers moved west for better opportunities, but of those who remained, many bought into the philosophy of white supremacy - even though it worked against them personally (though it sure did benefit the wealthy).

What was the main factor causing the Civil War? It was not tariffs, that’s for sure. It was not even the existence of slavery in the South. It was the question of whether slavery would be allowed to exist in the new states out West. Many Northerners, particularly Republicans, believed that if slavery was allowed in those new territories, plantation owners would gobble up all the land and poor whites who wanted to go west to start farms would be squeezed out. White workers would be squeezed out of a job.

Bear in mind, there were strong pockets of Union support in the South. That included East Tennessee, western North Carolina, northern Georgia and Alabama, and Western Virginia. In other words, the Appalachian Mountains, where you can’t grow cotton and the people were therefore not as attached to slavery. In other words, subsistence farmers as opposed to commercial plantation owners.

Even after the Civil War, though, racism was used as a wedge to keep the working class divided. This was done, first by conservative Democrats, and then by conservative Republicans. Black Lives Matter is a modern case-in-point. Most BLM protesters, black or not, have been peaceful, and their goal has been an end to the phenomenon of being shot-while-black. However, conservative media has stirred up the white working-and-middle-class portion of the GOP base into sheer paranoia, to the extent that whenever there has been such a protest locally (usually in Cookeville), the police have had to protect the protesters from white locals who show up with guns, because they are CERTAIN the protesters are there to riot and kill people.

This is a pattern that has been in place for 350 years, and it keeps working… stop letting it. Think for yourselves, as someone said.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.