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May 10, 2007

The U.S. Civil war ended in 1865, and the Reconstruction Act created five
Confederacy districts essentially under Martial law protecting the blacks
and keeping the peace with Federal troops. The 14th Amendment in 1868 gave
blacks citizenship, and the 15th Amendment created the black vote. The
U.S. Supreme Court left the responsibility for citizens rights up to the
individual states.

In 1877, at the end of Reconstruction, the conditions for the black


citizens deteriorated rapidly. The Southern states used poll taxes,
literacy tests and other schemes to deny most blacks their black vote. It
was at this time the Ku Klux Klan began terrorizing the blacks to the point
of a mass migration Northward in what has been referred as the Black
exodus. The American Colonization Society was founded and created Monrovia,
a colony in Northwest Africa. Very few blacks volunteered to re-colonize
back to Africa. That colony is today the African countryLiberia.

When investigating the evolution of the black vote in American politics,


it seems the black citizen was a race without a country or any meaningful
political representation. Then something happened that made the black
vote very importantthe Russian revolution in 1917. That revolution was
captured by the Marxist/Socialist ideological movement that was developing
in the growing struggle between Capitalism and Socialism. After the
revolution resulted in the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics(USSR) the movement spread to the U.S. and saw the founding of the
Communist Party USA in 1919. White intellectual idealogs quickly saw the
potential of the black vote for political influence and began pandering
to the black citizen and beginning to make the black vote desireable.
This new ideological struggle would see the enfranchisment of the black
citizen and the importance of the black vote. The racial struggle would
now join the class struggle in American politics.

In the early 20th Century the Socialist movement began preaching socialism
would solve the problems of the working classboth black and white. Many
Black churches began to preach that religion and socialism had the same
goals. Some of the most influential white socialist leaders helped the
black leaders found organizations like the NAACP in 1909. And the black
voter found themselves the central focus of the Communist party. When the
movement for desegregation and integration came about there was a loud cry
that it was a communist plot to bring about the destruction of America.
Finally during the Truman administration in the 1940s, Truman issued an
Executive Order ending racial segregation in the U.S. military, and from
that point on the black vote has been a big part in the Political party
competition and struggle in the combination class and racial problems of
America.

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