Abstract

Harry Golden

This article examines the poverty program in North Carolina. Since the Reconstruction, the black man in North Carolina has been the only poor man. White men chopped and tied tobacco for 25c a day, their children working away in the hot fields with them, but these white peons never believed they were poor in the way that Negroes were poor. White men had hope. The hope never led them any place, but still they believed it distinguished them from the black man. In rural areas poor white men did enjoy a certain social equality with the big plantation owners and the rich farmers. To apply now for aid from an integrated federal agency would forever erase that equality. In a survey of poverty program, North Carolina has more poor than any other state, 234,000 families, and 66 per cent of these families are white. Yet only a tiny fraction joins any poverty program.