The Accident of Color Quotes

“largest city, the federal military authorities stationed in Memphis sat on their hands. By the massacre’s end, at least forty-eight African-American men, women, and children were dead and five black women raped; only two whites died. To Northerners reading the news from Tennessee, the riot made plain Johnson’s complicity in the white South enforcing its own race-based mob rule.”
― Daniel Brook, The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction

“out Johnson could do nothing beyond publicly register his opposition.”
― Daniel Brook, The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction

“June, Congress drew up and quickly passed the Fourteenth Amendment that would, once ratified by three-fourths of the states, safeguard the equal-citizenship provisions of the new Civil Rights Act by enshrining them in the Constitution. The amendment would protect the Civil Rights Act from the Supreme Court by invalidating the Dred Scott ruling that African-Americans were not citizens. Since the Constitution assigns the president no role in the amendment”
― Daniel Brook, The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction

“opposition in the press, for the first time in American history Congress overrode a presidential veto on a major piece of legislation. On April 9, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 became law. In May, for good measure, Congress finished its amended Freedmen’s Bureau bill and passed it over Johnson’s veto.”
― Daniel Brook, The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction

“polyglot”
― Daniel Brook, The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction

“vaunted”
― Daniel Brook, The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction