Reconstruction era
Many white people in the Southern United States resisted allowing former slaves to have equal rights and to vote. The Ku Klux Klan was formed to force black people out of political and economic power. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, white people in the South used their regained political rights to pass Jim Crow Laws. These laws enforced segregation (keeping blacks and whites separate) and took the vote away from African Americans whose parents or grandparents were slaves. After Reconstruction, white Southerners voted mostly for the Democratic Party for about 80 years.