Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-446) and index Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJs Great Society and they now haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics - a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, history professor Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about Americas supposedly class-free society - where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. They were alternately known as 'waste people,' 'offals,' 'rubbish,' 'lazy lubbers,' and 'crackers.' By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called 'clay eaters' and 'sandhillers,' known for prematurely-aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.

The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement.

Nancy isenberg books