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By 1922, black disenfranchisement
had been essentially complete for about 12 years. In this map of the 1922
Congressional vote, notice that virtually all counties in the Deep South
reported returns for Republicans below 3%. This was not so much because
the Republican party stood for black rights--it had long since abandoned
that cause--but because the Democratic party was the chosen vehicle of
whites to establish and enforce white supremacy. This system was to remain
unchallenged by any mass political movement for another 30-odd years,
until the birth of the civil rights movement. Black voting rights were
not to be secured by law for another 43 years, with the passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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