“Imagine if Reconstruction had actually honored the citizenship of four million freedpeople – provided the education, political autonomy, and economic wherewithal warranted by their and their ancestors’ hundreds of years of free labor. If, instead of continually re-fighting the Civil War, we had actually moved on to rebuilding a strong, viable South, a South where poor whites, too – for they had been left out as well – could gain access to proper education. Imagine.”
