FROM THE AUTHORS OF THE SOUTH WAS RIGHT! comes a new edition of what one historian calls one of the most important and original histories of the Southern people. PUNISHED WITH POVERTY tells the unvarnished story of the intentional policy of economic devastation and exploitation of the South which has affected all Southerners, both black and white, long after the close of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In fact, the sad legacy of these punitive policies continues to this very day. The over-arching theme of Southern history is not Race, as is conventionally stated, but Poverty-poverty not due to the South’s shortcomings but imposed on them by the system under which they live. PUNISHED WITH POVERTY is a timely and much needed contribution to the understanding of both the South and the nature of the Federal Empire under which all Americans now live.
New edition includes 5 new appendixes and over 100 illustrations. COMMENTS ON PUNISHED WITH POVERTY

If enough Southerners would read and take to heart Punished with Poverty, it would bring about a revolution in American politics. - Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, author, publisher, and Godfather of Southern History

Long known for their intellectual fearlessness, the best-selling authors of The South Was Right! examine the roots of Southern poverty and the continuing struggle between the Southern culture-Bible believing, conservative and pro-Constitution-and the Federal Empire, which seeks to expand its power and stifle and restrict individual liberty at every opportunity. This eye-opening book focuses on the economic aspects of that struggle (but not exclusively) and should be required reading in every American history course in this country… - Dr. Samuel Mitcham, author of It Wasn’t About Slavery: Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War and The Greatest Lynching in American History: New York 1863

As the Kennedy’s have explained in this impressive book, the Confederate dead were not the only Southerners buried by the War. Lincoln’s ‘New America’ foisted years of poverty on the South and her people, which is why for generations more Southerners considered Reconstruction a greater calamity than the War itself. This book will certainly open your eyes. - Brion McClanahan, Ph.D, author of Southern Scribblings and 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America

The Kennedy Twins demonstrates that the War did not end slavery but only transformed it into sharecropping, a new form of slavery enslaving both Black and White Southerners. - Paul C. Gramling, Jr., Commander-in-Chief, Sons of Confederate Veterans, 2018-20

It is a well-known fact that the South is the poorest region in the country, and has been for the last 150 years. But, unbeknownst to many, history shows that it was once the richest. In this must-read volume, Southern historians Ronald and Donald Kennedy explain in meticulous detail how that happened and, most importantly, why! Every Southerner should read this book! - Ryan S. Walters, author of Remember Mississippi and The Last Jeffersonian