Thank you, David.  I had a headache yesterday and may not have read the
message as closely as I should have or been as clear as I intended in my
response.  I didn't mean to sound quite so obtuse.

While I understand the special case of the freedmen in the 1880s convict
lease program, my point was intended to be that race and class oppression
are intimately intertwined in our country--and that Twain tended to focus on
this part of the dynamic; i.e., it seems to me that he often saw race
through the lens of class, and class through the lens of race.  What I
intended to point out was that many of the specific post-bellum practices of
racial oppression were part of an historical continuum of class and race
oppression (my understanding is that the Missouri law was often used to
virtually enslave free people of color, making a mockery of that "freedom"),
and that Twain's understanding of the argument about the 1880s convict-lease
program would would have probably been colored by memories of his own youth
and a similar law's class/racial abuses in Missouri at that time.

Regards,
Sharon