A kind of freedom

摘要

"IN WHAT NEW skin will the old snake come forth?" The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass posed this question in 1865, a month after America's civil war ended. Slavery was dead. Hopes soared—and were soon dashed. As another great African-American intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois, put it: "The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." The post-war history of civil rights in America was dismal. Reconstruction—in which the North tried to rebuild and reform the South—lasted only a dozen years. It included some triumphs; for example, roughly 2,000 black politicians entered government in the late 19th century. But when Ulysses S. Grant, a racially progressive president, left office in 1877, the North tired of browbeating the South. White supremacy returned in force during a period shockingly known (by some) as "Redemption". The discrimination and segregation of Jim Crow took hold; black people were oppressed and denied the right to vote.