Under the 1872 Amnesty Act, most ex-Confederates had their voting rights restored, which permitted them to implement state laws that chipped away at freedmen and freedwomen’s short-lived rights and equality. Jim Crow laws, which legally separated the races in public accommodations and private businesses, began to emerge across the South and were eventually declared constitutional by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). African American men were barred from voting by state laws using such tactics as literacy tests, which required them to prove their knowledge of obscure federal and state laws and policies, and poll taxes, which required payment of a fee in order to vote. 

African Americans who dared to challenge these laws were harassed and faced extreme threats and physical violence from the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was a fraternal organization established during Reconstruction that aimed to terrorize African Americans and preserve White supremacy. African Americans who spent years laboring as agriculturalists prior to Emancipation emerged from slavery without their own land and were left economically dependent on White landowners.