<P> White Southerners encountered problems in learning free labor management after the end of slavery, and they resented black Americans, who represented the Confederacy's Civil War defeat: "With white supremacy being challenged throughout the South, many whites sought to protect their former status by threatening African Americans who exercised their new rights ." White Democrats used their power to segregate public spaces and facilities in law and reestablish social dominance over blacks in the South . </P> <P> One rationale for the systematic exclusion of black Americans from southern public society was that it was for their own protection . An early 20th - century scholar suggested that allowing blacks to attend white schools would mean "constantly subjecting them to adverse feeling and opinion", which might lead to "a morbid race consciousness". This perspective took anti-black sentiment for granted, because bigotry was widespread in the South after slavery became a racial caste system . </P> <P> After World War II, African Americans increasingly challenged segregation, as they believed they had more than earned the right to be treated as full citizens because of their military service and sacrifices . The Civil Rights Movement was energized by a number of flashpoints, including the 1946 police beating and blinding of World War II veteran Isaac Woodard while he was in U.S. Army uniform . In 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, desegregating the armed services . </P> <P> As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum and used federal courts to attack Jim Crow statutes, the white - dominated governments of many of the southern states countered by passing alternative forms of restrictions . </P>

What was not a common form of disfranchisement in the south during jim crow