Sometimes Brooklyn wonders what it was like for her ancestors who survived these thoroughly American pogroms, building lives and futures for themselves again and again only to have it all shot and lynched away. Did they hear the mobs coming? Were there warnings ahead of time—whispers over the wire, soldier instincts astir, sympathetic officials pulling aside favored servants or even clandestine lovers and telling them to brace for attack? What could they do, those proud but powerless people, in a country where no law protected them and even basic human decency turned its back? Where could they
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