Key segments in the criminal justice and political system, especially as the nation made a right turn during the Reagan years, insisted that the real violators were not the states at all but actually African Americans who committed outright voter fraud.131 Hank Sanders had witnessed this vicious scenario play out. Whenever blacks won political office or started to assert their voting rights, he remarked, the prosecutor’s office would launch an extensive investigation. This move had but one purpose: intimidation. “Every time people start investigating you,” he explained, “you start drawing back
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