The old ideal of a working life—the original American dream of a competency, the amount of money needed to support a family, provide a cushion for hard times and old age and to set children up in life, rather than great riches—seemed harder and harder to attain.

I would hope that they would realize that white supremacy (even though who counts as white has evolved and changed) has been a powerful and malicious force in American history. It triumphed following Reconstruction because the federal government failed to use the powers that it possessed to suppress terrorism. The failure of Reconstruction wasn’t inevitable. Terrorism won, but the Klan and other organizations could have been suppressed. The federal government and state militias did suppress terrorism in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Arkansas. Ultimately, it was the failure of the federal government to use its authority to place troops in the South and protect black voters—who demonstrated remarkable courage in attempting to retain their rights—that crippled the promise of a homogenous citizenry. Rapidly in some places, gradually in others, black men lost the vote

By 1880 John Hay thought that the Southern Democrats had so perfected their machinery of suppressing black votes “that even murder, the cheapest of all political methods in the South, will hardly be necessary this year.”

The Lost Cause is one of the most deeply ingrained mythologies in American history.

But if this is to be our 1989, we must make the most of it. The whole world may be watching.