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1. So many thoughts right now about @MarilynMosbyEsq presser, #FreddieGray. Some of them are about Reconstruction.
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2. One thing I try to impress on students is how important local black office-holding was in the Reconstruction South.
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3. Most students, if they've been taught Reconstruction at all, have been taught to focus on gains black suffrage made at national level.
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4. But scholarship by Eric Foner, Steven Hahn, so many others stresses importance of local offices: coroners, tax assessors, magistrates...
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5. It mattered whether areas of Reconstruction South had black police officers, like this one. digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=scmo&cc=scmo&idno=scmo0008-2&node=scmo0008-2%3A1&view=image&seq=163&size=100
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6. Cf. Foner's account of Combahee (local black judges made huge difference), to Hahn's account of Camilla Riot, where sheriff was white.
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7. It's a point that will be easier for students to grasp if we compare McCulloch in #Ferguson & @MarilynMosbyEsq in #Baltimore.
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8. Not just from the way that Mosby talked about being answerable to her Baltimore City constituency, about hearing their cries.
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9. But also from her evocative mentions of her family, and her grandfather who was a member of one of the first black cop orgs in city.
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10. Walking in to work this morning, I saw tweets predicting that because Mosby had cops in the family, she would be as biased as McCulloch.
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11. Instead, she demonstrated (what Reconstruction historians knew) how imperative it is to black freedom struggles to secure local power.
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12. In wake of criticisms of mayor, which sometimes raised larger doubts about local black politicians, Mosby told a more complex story.