In the post-Reconstruction era, after 1880, African Americans experienced disenfranchisement and a denial of justice. Nine out of 10 of the 6.5 million African Americans in the United States lived in the South, with 80 percent of those Southerners living in rural areas (Bair, 2000). Many areas of the South promised African Americans both political liberty and justice. However, at the same time promises were being made, African Americans saw their political rights increasingly under attack. By the 1890s, Jim Crow laws segregated people of different races in public places, such as schools, restaurants, hotels, and theaters. Also, different rules were applied to blacks and whites so that blacks were limited in their abilities to vote, secure
