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The failure of that dream -- the refusal of the political leaders of America to ground political freedom on economic freedom -- doomed Reconstruction and paved way to our present crisis.

Before the curtain that lifted for a moment dropped, black men their white allies carreid the South and the black man to heights of democracy that have not yet been equalled in this Republic. During the heydey of Reconstruction, from 1867 to 1877, black men served in the legislature of every Southern state. And in South Carolina, during this period, black men had a majority in the legislature in every session save one. Black people also sent 20 representatives to the House of Representives and two black men were elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Mississippi. There were also treasures, secretaries of state and superintendents of education in Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisianna, and Florida. And for a brief period, the brilliant black politician, P.B.S. Pinchback, served as governor of the state of Louisiana.

Despite mistakes, which were inevitable under the circumstances, black people made large strides in renovating the political structures of the South. People who say that black power is simply white power in blackface ought to think long and hard about the Reconstruction period. Black people had considerable power in South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, where they constitured a majority of the population and a majority of the registered voters. The record indicates that the Black REconstruction governments gave poor and middle class white peopl rights aristocratic whites had denied them. Not only that: Black people, in perhaps their greatest contribution, created in the South what had never existed before, a public school system supported by public taxation.

Perhaps the most important development of this period was the expansion of the political horizons of black people. Since polities was real, since it was an activity that corroborated reality and promised to change reality, black people gave to politics the kind of attention their children and grandchildren would give to entertainment and religion. Black people lived in that faraway and mystical period in a primary relation with power. they turned