WHAT STATES COULD NOT ACCOMPLISH BY LAW, they were more than willing to achieve by violence. Attacks on black Americans in Colfax, Louisiana (1873), Wilmington, North Carolina (1898), and Ocoee, Florida (1920)—just to name a few—resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives simply because whites were enraged that black people had voted. As states encouraged or winked at the murders, as killers stepped over the bodies and gobbled up victims’ land and other property, black political power evaporated in a hail of gunfire and flames. This violence continued well into the twentieth century.
