SLSA’s latest Working History podcast, “Poor Whites in the Slave South,” is available for listening on iTunes and SoundCloud. The episode features Keri Leigh Merritt who discusses her book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, and intersections of race, class, politics, and slavery in the pre-Civil War South. The episode is hosted by Beth English, immediate past president of the Southern Labor Studies Association.

Keri Leigh Merritt works as an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in history in 2014 from the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on race and class in U.S. history. Her first book is Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and she is co-editor with Matthew Hild of the forthcoming book, Reviving Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power. She 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. Her work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards.

You can listen here.