During the Civil War, a popular poem ran in various black newspapers to illustrate how the anguish of white Americans finally had reached parity with the suffering of slaves.

In the poem, titled "The Two Southern Mothers," a white woman greeted with "frantic sorrow" the body of her only son, a Confederate officer who had died in battle.

Her "aged slave," though, did not console her. The white woman had sold all 10 of the black woman's children. Both ...

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