Urban Alliances: the Emergence of Race-Based Populism in the Age of Jackson

Abstract

On a cold January day in 1987 civil rights marchers moved in chanting columns toward the court house square in Forsyth county, Georgia, a place where, even in the mid-1980s, no black person could live, or even visit safely after dark. As the marchers reached the court house itself they were met by the jeers of counter-protesters, white supremacists shouting racial insults and carrying a sign which read, “The future of America, Red Necks and White Skins.”