Those who’ve found it difficult to connect with the racial history of post-Civil War America – when Black Americans were stripped of the citizenship rights they gained right after that conflict – should pay special attention to the national political arena now. Because the conservative movement, in its desperate mania to destroy Barack Obama’s presidency and neutralize the growing political clout of Americans of color, is dramatizing how that betrayal and the construction of a post-slavery racist society was accomplished. The tricked–up claims of “voter fraud” by state legislatures in order to deny Blacks access to the ballot box. Federal...