Deference to the police powers of the states was an American tradition, and that was precisely the problem. Republicans’ Reconstruction measures were designed to protect people when they could not get justice in their home jurisdictions, but those measures and their defenders often found themselves outmatched both in the courts and on the ground. Mobilizing arguments for police powers that dated back to before the nation’s founding, as well as raw white supremacy, opponents insisted that real world challenges of social order superceded any promise of meaningful racial equality. They declared
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