The drive to disenfranchise black people, in particular, is best understood by going back to strides toward a real democracy. A government, as Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, “of the people, by the people, for the people.” This moment came after the Civil War, during Reconstruction. It brought, among other things, the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (slavery abolished), the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment (black citizenship cemented), and the 1870 Fifteenth Amendment (black men gained the national vote). But a more democratic America was anathema to a multitude of
...more
