Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Last month, a grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., indicted former President Donald Trump, charging him with 13 felonies related to his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election — an election that, for all intents and purposes, was decided by Black voters in Georgia. After the race was called, the then-sitting president launched his multi-pronged, conspiratorial strategy — what we now know as the “Big Lie” — to sow division, spread fear and undermine the clear will of voters, specifically Black voters in Georgia who turned out overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. The former president’s actions, especially in Georgia, were a direct response to this demonstration of Black political power.
From the racial terror inflicted by confederate sympathizers in the aftermath of the Civil War to the Ku Klux Klan of the early 20th century to segregationists in the ’50s and ’60s to current “Make America Great Again” sycophants in GOP-controlled state legislatures, including here in Georgia, white supremacists’ attacks on growing Black political power are nothing new. The former president’s actions to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia is just one in a string of backlashes — or rather, whitelashes — dating all the way back to Reconstruction. The formula is simple, albeit no less appalling. When we win, they attack.
Reconstruction is known for being a time of progress for Black Americans, especially in the South. Between 1869 and 1872, voters elected the first Black members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from Mississippi and South Carolina, respectively. That same…
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