One of the big problems with US President Donald Trump’s nostalgic view of the country’s history — “Make America Great Again” — it that it has always winked at the ghost of Jim Crow. Nowhere does that ghost haunt the promise of the American Dream more vividly than the city where Trump will hold his re-election campaign rally on Saturday night: Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Last week, as the country was engulfed in protests against racism, Trump announced that he would stage his first live campaign rally since the start of the coronavirus pandemic on, of all days, Juneteenth. The annual celebration of Juneteenth marks the date (June 19 1865) when word finally reached Texas that slavery was abolished and slaves were, at long last, free...

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