White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

by Nancy Isenberg

Byrd referred to people on welfare as “fornicating deadbeats.” He even appeared unsympathetic to children obtaining government assistance: if they were merely hungry, but not starving, they did not merit aid. As a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, Byrd conveniently distinguished welfare recipients in the District of Columbia (mostly black) from the deadbeats of his home state of West Virginia. Thus he made no effort to root out welfare cheaters among the mountain whites; they were his ticket into politics. In his first run for office, he courted the hillbilly crowd by playing fiddle tunes in the backseat of a car as he went from shack to shack. Reenacting the old tale of the Arkansas traveler, he cleverly played both roles in the nineteenth-century drama: the poor white and the ambitious politician. The New York Times declared Byrd to be the “embodiment of poor white power.” He was Lillian Smith’s angry redneck, who had “hacked his way out of the bushes” of poverty. As a symbol of political intolerance, he was as ruthless as they came.