Frederick Douglass—after having escaped slavery, fought with all that he had for abolition, pushed for Black citizenship through military service, and worked with members of Congress to pass key legislation—knew that things had reached the point, after years of domestic terrorism, Northern retreat, and Supreme Court decisions, that “he could not fully trust his own country.”71 It was like being relegated to somewhere between slave and citizen. Historian Nan Elizabeth Woodruff poignantly wrote, “Black people had learned since the end of Reconstruction that what the federal government gave with
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