A study that challenges the scholarship on the roots of disfranchisement in America, arguing that historians have misunderstood the role of race and class in this antidemocratic movement. It shows that the racist appeals of Alabama's white planters, industrialists, and other conservatives motivated poor whites in greater numbers.

Historian Glenn Feldman is associate professor and director of the Center for Labor Education and Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is the author or editor of seven books on Southern politics, religion, race, and economics. Feldman is a native of Birmingham, Alabama.