Expounding upon the Civil War origins of our problems:
Every member of Confederate “high command”, both military and civilian, should have been executed.
The wealth and property of any slaveholding plantationers should have been seized by force and redistributed to the formerly enslaved to follow through on the “forty acres and a mule” edict. Allowing slavers to keep and/or regain control of their wealth was a critical error.
The South should have had their participation in the federal government stripped away from them and been under US military rule for at least a generation.
Of course all this assumes that there was the public heart to actually stand up for black people and truly punish the slavers, where the reality was at best complicated, and more likely highly disappointing.
Expounding upon the Civil War origins of our problems:
Every member of Confederate “high command”, both military and civilian, should have been executed.
The wealth and property of any slaveholding plantationers should have been seized by force and redistributed to the formerly enslaved to follow through on the “forty acres and a mule” edict. Allowing slavers to keep and/or regain control of their wealth was a critical error.
The South should have had their participation in the federal government stripped away from them and been under US military rule for at least a generation.
Of course all this assumes that there was the public heart to actually stand up for black people and truly punish the slavers, where the reality was at best complicated, and more likely highly disappointing.