Keri Leigh Merritt

Keri Leigh Merritt

Keri Leigh Merritt is an independent historian in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South. Follow her on Twitter: @KeriLeighMerrit.

Articles by this author

Once white supremacy began crumbling and white privilege began to wane, poor and working-class whites were left with a question of where, precisely, they fit into American society. (Photo: κύριαsity/flickr/cc) Views
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Deaths of Despair and the Psychological Wages of Whiteness
In 2017 alone, 158,000 Americans died from what Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton deem “deaths of despair” -- a disturbing triumvirate of suicide, alcohol and opioid-related deaths that primarily have ravaged the middle-aged poor and working-class whites. To put these numbers in stark...
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Sunday, September 17, 2017
Why We Need a Universal Basic Income
As Labor Day approached this year, I awaited the lip service of Republicans praising "job creators" and business owners. I knew full well there was no chance they'd honor the common laborer—the people who feed, house, and transport them; the workers who keep their cities clean and their towns...
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Thousands gather with candles to march along the path that white supremacists took the prior Friday with torches on the University of Virginia Campus in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 16, 2017. Views
Friday, August 18, 2017
Charlottesville and the Confederate Legacy
As Americans struggle to make sense of the bloodshed resulting from the white supremacist “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville this past weekend, we must remember the movement’s historical predecessors. In their vicious quest to “Make America White Again,” this motley conglomeration of...
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