Poor whites disenfranchised along with blacks

“The [1890s] laws that took the vote away from blacks — poll taxes, literacy tests, property qualifications — also often ensured that poor whites would not vote….

“The Charlotte Observer saw disenfranchisement as ‘the struggle of the white people of North Carolina to rid themselves of the dangers of the rule of negroes and the lower class of whites.’ ”

– From “A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present” (1980) by Howard Zinn

Zinn, 87, died Wednesday in Auburndale, Mass. “A People’s History,” a pioneering work of revisionism, has sold nearly 2 million copies.

George Moses Horton, Redux

We’ve been discussing which North Carolianians would be good candidates for appearing on a NC-centric Mount Rushmore, and George Moses Horton has come up.  There’s a lot of online resources here at UNC about his life and poems, including:

Slavery and the Making of the University, George Moses Horton
An online exhibit from the Southern Historical Collection that includes correspondence between Horton and David Swain and Horace Greely.

Life of George M. Horton. The Colored Bard of North Carolina from “The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, the Colored Bard of North Carolina, to which is Prefixed the Life of the Author, written by himself.”
From Documenting the American South, the full text of the autobiographical introduction to The Poetical Works of George Horton Moses, which is linked below.

The Poetical Works of George M. Horton: The Colored Bard of North Carolina: To Which is Prefixed the Life of the Author, Written by Himself.
From Documenting the American South, the full text of The Poetical Works of George M. Horton.  For more information about Horton’s biography, click here.

George Moses Horton Exhibit, Documentary Resources Available at UNC
Click on “Horton Manuscripts at UNC-CH” to view scanned images of Horton poems housed in the Southern Historical Collection.