Enfranchisement empowered African Americans: More than two thousand southern freedmen won elective office in the 1870s, including fourteen congressmen and two U.S. senators. At one point, more than 40 percent of legislators in Louisiana's and South Carolina's lower houses were black. And because African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, black enfranchisement invigorated Republican and other challengers to the once-dominant Democrats.
( Steven Levitsky )
[ How Democracies Die ]
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