The word "freedom" for many black Americans is inextricably linked with the word "slaver

y." While it has 148 years【M1】______ since the Emancipation Proclamation, and 47 years since the landmark Civil Rights Act, for many, the words of Martin Luther King in his famous speech still ring real: "The Negro lives on a【M2】______ lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity." Many black Americans still find themselves spiritually and economically slaved on the figurative 21st-century plantation.【M3】______ Why is that still so？ After all, for the last 47 years, our leaders have passed on bill after bill ostensibly to free black Americans【M4】______ from the manacles of poverty and provide ever-stronger safety nets for those disadvantaged. Because two very formidable forces have【M5】______ conspired over these last 47 years—almost the span of my complete life—to shackle the economic freedoms and aspirations【M6】______ of the black community: liberal progressive policies, generally supported by Democrats, and the socialist ideology espoused by prominent blacks as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.【M7】______ This is always curious to me that black Americans typically【M8】______ vote Democrat, when it was a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and a Republican from Ohio, Representative James Mitchell Ashley, who came forth the bill to support an amendment to end slavery【M9】______ throughout the United States. Nearly 100 years late, when the【M10】______ initial Civil Rights Bill came before the full Senate in 1964, it was a group of 18 Southern Democrats who argued most fervently against its passage.

【M1】