Whitecapping was the name associated with activities by a dirt farmer movement that arose in the Piney Woods region of southern Mississippi. Poor whites organized against low prices, rising costs, and increasing tenancy brought about by the crop lien system. Whitecaps resented black tenant farmers on lands acquired by foreclosure by merchants—some of them Jewish. Whitecap Clubs, resembling fraternal and military organizations, tried to intimidate black laborers and landowners, and to prevent mercantile land acquisition. They were anti-black and anti-Jewish. Whitecaps came from the rural poor; their leaders from a higher social stratum.