hern whites, and an end to federal enforcement of black equality in the South was the price of conciliation. Frederick Douglass declared that as the war for the Union recedes into the misty shadows of the past, and the Negro is not longer needed to assault forts and stop rebel bullets, he is . . . of less importance. Peace with the old master class has been war to the Negro. As the one has risen, the other has fallen. The Reconstruction guarantees of the national state were broken. The ugly truth was now exposed. Abolition was a war between whites, and blacks joined only on sufferance. Douglass knew this early on, but now everyone knew. It may sound depressing, but Douglass, and many others like him, did build the foundation for later equality movements by Martin Luther King. Today, we are still working up to the ideals of Douglass crusade....
