Columnist Charles M. Blow of the New York Times was certainly right when he wrote on Wednesday that Reconstruction was “allowed to fail” when the Civil War ended and the last federal troops withdrew from the South.
Blow observes that “even though there was a large percentage of Black voters in many of these states — and Black voters were the majority in some — the terrorists were able to significantly reduce that voter participation through intimidation and violence.” This meant it would take seven more decades before Congress would fully restore voting rights for many black men in the South.
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