The Columbians recruited poor white workers abandoned by elite segregationist politicians

Evidence

To launch their plan, the Columbians set up headquarters at the edge of Atlanta’s warehouse district. Their dirty, three-room office held a library of Nazi histories and a Confederate battle flag. Enlisting was fairly easy. “There are just three requirements,” Loomis told prospects. “Number one: Do you hate niggers? Number two: Do you hate Jews? And three: Have you got three dollars?” The result was a collection of social outcasts, but the leaders saw their troops in a different light. “We welcomed all members of the Whiteman’s community into our fellowship, but we worked mainly among the underprivileged—those of our brothers and sisters that many of the politicians call ‘poor white trash,’ ” Burke later recalled. Indeed, while the Hartsfield coalition spurned such support, the Columbians consciously targeted the working class. The door to their headquarters pointedly identified them as the “Columbian Workers Movement,” and the leadership often professed its common ground with working-class whites as well. “In spite of the smugness of some of our financially well-off White brethren,” Burke noted, “there are far fewer betrayers of the Whiteman’s Way of Life among the simple and hardworking young textile workers and farmers.” — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 111

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how class schism within white Atlanta — elite moderates versus working rank-and-file — drives whom each segregationist faction courts; echoes the ‘Grafting & Growth’ reader’s interest in contested social infrastructure, but more directly parallels chapters on elite/labor splits in Base Nation and A Mission to Civilize. — connects to: Defeated planters broke potential Black-white labor unity by recruiting poor whites.; Politicians abandon their Black base when courting white voters pays off — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 779

Broader Connections

• Defeated planters broke potential Black-white labor unity by recruiting poor whites. #corroborates (0.85)
• Politicians abandon their Black base when courting white voters pays off #qualifies (0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 779