Blacks were still elected to local offices through the 1880s, but the establishment Democrats were passing 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.
[4][5] 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.
[4][5] Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate whites to vote but gave no relief to most blacks.
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 percent 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."
[6] 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, there were also the effects of invisibility: "[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."
[6] Alabama had tens of thousands of poor whites disenfranchised.[7]
