ABSTRACT
Conflict over the place of African Americans in the United States has been an agonizing "American dilemma" for more than two centuries—and no conflicts in American history involved federalism more openly. In the United States, federalism and race have been inseparably intertwined. First, federalism allowed the states to decide whether to encourage and expand slavery, or to abolish it. Second, federalism allowed the slave-holding states to prolong the exclusion of blacks for generations, long after abolition and the military defeat of the Southern slave states in the nineteenth century. Third, federalism has fragmented efforts to deal with the consequences of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. Democratic presidential administrations in the 1910s and the 1930s refused to challenge white supremacy in the South. The rising tide of civil rights finally washed away state laws that enforced white supremacy and imposed national rules for the inclusion of black citizens.
