The Freedmen's Bureau had reported a multitude of physical attacks on freedmen and their supporters in Louisiana from 1865 to 1868, when the Bureau was closed and no authority recorded this data. After the Bureau closed in 1872, atrocities were largely buried by local communities and seldom taken to court. Federal courts, as well as the Louisiana Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, did not generally hear charges at the state level. Following the end of Reconstruction, the rate of lynchings of blacks increased, reaching a peak at the end of the 19th century, when Louisiana and other southern states passed new constitutions and laws to effectively disenfranchise African Americans.