Similarly, those who railed against cocaine did so in anti-black terms. Plantation foremen had given it to enslaved workers to stimulate work and reduce hunger. Now cocaine was vilified because black people were taking it of their own accord. Prohibitionists raised the specter of drug-induced attacks on white women, and many accusations of rape and concomitant lynchings were tied to the drug. There was also a widespread fear in the South that blacks on cocaine had superhuman strength and couldn’t be stopped with .32-caliber bullets, then the standard police issue, prompting the widespread
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