alanabit, too bad you don't have time to add a few more texts to that class. And I think you'd be better served to make the discussion cover "poverty" as a whole. Help students examine their stereotypes but don't feed them first by suggesting that poor whites mostly picked on poor blacks. As others have stated, the issues aren't cut-and-dried like that.

Consider reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. And some Faulkner. Go Down, Moses would be good.

SRS