Simmons produced a two-hundred-page screed, the Democratic Party Hand Book. The booklet reflected Simmons’s ingrained belief that blacks were genetically doomed at birth as members of an inherently ignorant and incompetent race. It was distributed to thousands of white voters, with instructions to vote “the white man’s ticket.” Within its pages, Simmons distilled the Southern white man’s burden: It is no fault of the negro that he is here, and he is not to be punished for being here; but this is a white man’s country and white men must control and govern it … Under the benign rule of the
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