Sicilians’ solidarity with blacks provoked white community anger

Evidence

Plantation owners treated Sicilians and blacks similarly—very poorly—which motivated Sicilians to strike, together with black Americans, in support of improved wages and working conditions. Sicilians established their own retail stores in the rural South and often accorded black customers the same dignity and respect they did white customers. This didn’t go over well with white community members. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 120

Categorization

• XREF: Anti-Black social control directed at whites who breached racial etiquette parallels the earlier moral-panics analysis of class and dress regulation.