<P> During the Reconstruction period of 1865--1877, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the U.S. South for freedmen, the African Americans who had formerly been slaves, and the minority of blacks who had been free before the war . In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures, having used insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the White League and the Red Shirts, to disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate blacks to suppress their voting . Extensive voter fraud was also used . Gubernatorial elections were close and had been disputed in Louisiana for years, with increasing violence against blacks during campaigns from 1868 onward . </P> <P> In 1877, a national Democratic Party compromise to gain Southern support in the presidential election resulted in the government's withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South . White Democrats had regained political power in every Southern state . These Southern, white, Democratic Redeemer governments legislated Jim Crow laws, officially segregating black people from the white population . </P> <P> Blacks were still elected to local offices throughout the 1880s, but their voting was suppressed for state and national elections . Democrats passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease . Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states, starting with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record - keeping requirements . Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate whites to vote but gave no relief to most blacks . </P> <P> Voter turnout dropped drastically through the South as a result of such measures . In Louisiana, by 1900, black voters were reduced to 5,320 on the rolls, although they comprised the majority of the state's population . By 1910, only 730 blacks were registered, less than 0.5% of eligible black men . "In 27 of the state's 60 parishes, not a single black voter was registered any longer; in 9 more parishes, only one black voter was ." The cumulative effect in North Carolina meant that black voters were completely eliminated from voter rolls during the period from 1896--1904 . The growth of their thriving middle class was slowed . In North Carolina and other Southern states, blacks suffered from being made invisible in the political system: "(W) ithin a decade of disfranchisement, the white supremacy campaign had erased the image of the black middle class from the minds of white North Carolinians ." In Alabama tens of thousands of poor whites were also disenfranchised, although initially legislators had promised them they would not be affected adversely by the new restrictions . </P>

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