America Before White Supremacy: Anglo-Saxonism in the North
Up to about 1760, the greatest fears of powerful English at home and in the colonies came from Europe’s powerful Catholic monarchies and those states’ overseas empires.
Cavalier Mythology in the Antebellum South
Powerful people in the Antebellum South feared landless whites almost as much as they feared their slaves.
How White Supremacy Took Shape: Violence, Money, Pseudoscience and Art
How did the proponents of a white supremacist mythology prevail in the struggle to define America’s future? What can we learn from their success?
White Violence Defined the Threat Landscape
In politics, who you admire may be less important than who you fear.
Northern Industrialists Scuttled Reconstruction
Wealthy Northern industrialists, not the planters, defeated Reconstruction.
Science in Service of White Empire
Under an emerging mythology of white supremacy, there was no price to be paid for using the imprimatur of science to promote unfounded, sometimes downright batty assertions, with terrifying implications for real, living people.
Artists Packaged White Supremacy
Myths follow power, but in the years after the Civil War many powers vied to dominate the American future. Artists like Whitman made choices that tipped the scales in this battle toward terrible ends.
How White Supremacy Failed
By the post-WW2 era, white supremacy was becoming an obstacle to money and power.