W.E.B. Du Bois writes in Black Reconstruction, “the center of the corruption charge…was in fact that poor men were ruling and taxing rich men.”3 And in describing the chief rhetorical claim behind disenfranchising black citizens, Du Bois writes: The south, finally, with almost complete unity, named the negro as the main cause of southern corruption. They said, and reiterated this charge, until it became history: that the cause of dishonesty during reconstruction was the fact that 4,000,000 disfranchised black laborers, after 250 years of exploitation, had been given a legal right to have some
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