History

"The Lowry Wars"

there's a chapter in this book that places them in the context of a multiracial, insurrectionary movement in the south.

https://files.libcom.org/files/Dixie%20Be%20Damned%20-%20300%20Years%20of%20Insurrection%20in%20the%20American%20South%20-%20Neal%20Shirley%20and%20Saralee%20Stafford.pdf

there's an earlier chapter titled "a subtle restless fire" that is also cool.

the best histories of America are hidden, never taught, and purposely forgotten lest anybody get any ideas. it's a great book overall.

edit: you can read the wiki entry for the Lowry Wars to get the basic, kinda sanitized outline of what was a big, national event at the time. the book chapter I linked gives an insurrectionary leftist account with rich details of folk heroism and the concerns of regional/national power about how popular the "gang" was. because, in truth, it was large indigenous family with kinship ties and general acceptance of anyone who wanted to live communally, subsistence style out in the swamps... places the law couldn't pursue. it came to the attention of the war because free persons of color an whites would join the group to hide/avoid being conscripted to the Confederacy. so the equivalent of the national guard at the time started trying to fuck with them through kidnapping aka "arrests" and made up charges, so the group went to war against the plantation families as the real engine behind the conflict. and regular working class peopled supported them.

it was a fucking mess for the powers that be.

anyway, it's a great story.