They did not go deep enough and besides the whites refused to cooperate with the blacks to make them a success.
Archibald Henry Grimké: “They did not go deep enough and besides the whites refused to cooperate with the blacks to make them a success.”
Editor's note · Context
Grimké argues that the failure of reconstruction was due to insufficient depth and lack of cooperation from white Southerners.
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There must be added to them this something else, this one thing needful to render them effective to save the blacks from the evil consequences of their race ignorance, and the whites from the evil consequences of their race prejudice.
But to do this, to realize on their party promises and pledges to the people, they must have votes, not mere good will which can not translate itself into effective support on election day.
That colored men with the ballot should be rated in terms of the political game higher than other colored men who have it not, violates no rule of business ethics.
That the founder of the new political party, as a practical man, should discriminate between colored men with a vote and colored men without a vote seems to me to be altogether natural, to grow, in fact, out of the necessities of every…