“To the plantation planters such a wage contract was economic heresy and social revolution,” W.E.B. Without land redistribution and a measure of material equality, political rights for blacks (and whites) would falter under the weight of planter power and racial caste. Instead, they allowed Northern and Southern employers to extract profit by any means necessary, imposing peonage and sharecropping on landless former slaves. And without a three-pronged assault on racial domination, social exclusion and economic inequality, race hierarchy would survive, as it does now, diminishing the promise of American democracy. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Source: New York Times March 04, 2019 20:37 UTC