The New South: Relationship between Whites and African Americans

It was after the Reconstruction and the Southern Whites went back to their ole' Democratic ways. These Whites wanted things to go back to normal and re-exert their dominance in the south. This obviously wouldn't be a good sign for the freed African Americans who only a few years before and it wasn't when they were arbitrarily faced with unemployment, eviction, and physical harm from groups like the KKK. Ultimately, the African Americans were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming where in some cases, they had to work for their old masters.

The worst part is that white hatred of the African Americans grew and ultimately, an informal separation between blacks and whites grew into state legal codes of segregation (Jim Crow Laws). The southern whites also tried to prevent these freedmen from voting by making the literacy tests biased and later, used poll taxed to ensure full scale disenfranchisement of the black population in the south. Though they were separate, they were not equal.

The cause of equality was somewhat helped by the 1896 case of Plessy vs. Fergussen which recognized the southern social order of segregation but there should still be equality between the whites and African Americans. The basis for the new "separate but equal" ruling was the fourteenth ammendment.

In reality, however, the African Americans were not even close to obtaining equality. They went to schools in relatively worse conditions, had to eat out back at diners, and never were in first class on trains. They had to use different restrooms and weren't allowed into select theatres. The worst part is that everyday, they were reminded of their second class status almost on a daily basis just by looking at the world around them.
There were some African Americans who protested segregation but these southern whites, who wanted "stability", lynched these protesters to "put them in their place". These mistreated African Americans were lynched waaaaaaay more times than whites were. In 1900, one hundred African Americans were lynched in contrast to just nine whites. It wouldn't be until the 1950s where the push for equality would begin.