The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment caused Republicans to turn their backs on the struggle against racial discrimination. After refusing to redistribute land, and giving landless Blacks the ability to choose their own masters, and calling that freedom; after handing poor Blacks an equal rights statement they could use in the expensive courts, and calling that equality; they put the ballot in the Black man’s hand and called that security. “The ballot is the citadel of the colored man’s safety,” parodied one Black southerner, “the guarantor of his liberty, the protector of his rights, the
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