““In his campaign for the presidency, Reagan mastered the "excision of the language of race from conservative public discourse"… For example, when Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign at the annual Neshoba County fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi - the town were three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964 - he assured the crowd "I believe and states rights," and promised to restore to states and local government the power that properly belonged to them. His critics promptly alleged that he was signaling a racial message to his audience, suggesting allegiance with those who resisted desegregation, but Reagan firmly denied it, forcing liberals into a position that would soon become familiar, arguing that something is racist but finding it impossible to prove in the absence of explicitly racist language. (48)””
![“[T]he slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. —W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America For” quote by Michelle Alexander](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/fdb/michelle-alexander-750_time_t-he-slave-went-free-stood-a-brief-momen_96485.jpg)
