[aruanan]

So much for the GOP trying to reach out and build bridges to the black community.....

The GOP did a super job in the South following the Civil War until the Southern Democrats threatened to filibuster the counting of electoral votes after the 1876 presidential election in which the Republican Hayes had more electoral votes than the Democrat Tilden who apparently had more popular votes. Then they agreed not to filibuster if the North agreed to move the Union troops out of the South, whereupon the Southern Democrats took over everything they had held prior to the war and basically Jim Crowed all the black Republicans out of office. The Republican governments of Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana fell apart and the blacks were pulled back onto the plantation where they've remained electoral captives ever since.

[thulldud]

The Republican governments of Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana fell apart....

By that time, there was nothing left in SC for them to steal. Those Radical governments were as corrupt as anything you could imagine.

Corruption lives on, although it's sold under a different label these days.

[Intolerant in NJ]

...blacks were pulled back onto the plantation where they've remained electoral captives ever since...I think a lot of their captivity is willing - it's especially offensive when blacks complain resentfully that there are no blacks in the Republican party, as though Republicans don't want them there, when in fact efforts to attract and include them are met with the kind of hostility and contempt on display in this story......