This area of the state was predominately Democratic following the American Civil War, but the significant minority of African Americans joined the Republican Party. The white-dominated state legislature in the 1880s passed four laws that effectively disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, particularly due to the requirement of payment of a poll tax in order to register to vote. This reduced the competitiveness of the Republican Party in the state for more than six decades, and thus it effectively held political power only in eastern Tennessee.