After 1877, and the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, the South quickly replaced Reconstruction laws with new ones that restricted the rights of blacks. These laws allowed the South's new upper class of planters, merchants and industrialists to prosper, while most blacks sank deeper into poverty. Between 1880 and 1900, the per capita income of the Deep South showed no increase at all, and the average black farmer's decreased. Racial segregation, called "Jim Crow," excluded blacks from public transport and facilities, jobs, juries, and neighborhoods. Blacks had separate hospitals, prisons, orphanages, parks and pools. The 19th century ended with the races firmly segregated -- culturally and legally.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896: In 1890, Louisiana passed the "Separate Car Law," which claimed to ensure passenger "comfort" by directing railroads to provide "equal but separate" cars for the two races. It was illegal for anyone to occupy seats in coaches used by the other race. In 1891, a group of black citizens formed a committee to test the law's constitutionality, intending to take the case to the Supreme Court, if necessary.

The committee hired a lawyer, then had Homer A. Plessy sit in a white-only railroad coach. He refused to move and was arrested. The state argued the separating the races was legal, as long as the service provided to each were equal. Plessy's lawyer argued that the question wasn't the equality of accommodations, but the "right of the State to label one citizen as white and another as colored" in the course of daily life. The Supreme Court decided in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that "separate but equal" public facilities were legal, putting the federal stamp of approval on Jim Crow.