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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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down long before there was a War Between the States, and that they had been ruined by the false economy of their area and their community. They were therefore more desperate people. Somehow or other in Virginia, and even North Carolina, they'd made out after a fashion. They had something else besides this plantation system to fall back on.

Also there were many more “poor white trash” in this area. I knew this from my history that there were more people of the type that James Oglethorpe had brought out to settle in Georgia, descended from that type of person. That, I knew. I know there were a lot of poor, white people who were even in the earliest days in competition with the Negro. The Negro had food and a roof over his head on the plantation when he worked hard, the white people who were poor had less security. That was part of the reason for the bitter jealousy and the bitter dislike of the Negroes. One got that without having to be told. You saw it in the evidence there.

We had been asked to go down to some town in Alabama by someone who was arranging the tour. We had an all right meeting. We also had terrible talking in the back of the room, trying to break up the meeting. The Democratic committee got them out of the room somehow and quieted it down. The big audience began to hiss at them to shut up. A lot





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