Part 3, Chapter 8 Of Ballots and Biracialism Summary

The Readjuster movement was one of the most successful challenges to the Democratic Party rule in the rural South during the late 1870s and early 1880s. The challenges of independents, reenergized Republicans, and third parties exposed the divisions within the Democratic Party and among white Southerners. These challenges offered African Americans some political space as the challenges depended on black votes. Democratic legislatures followed with a somewhat haphazard attack against black political power, which weakened and containing it. These attacks, Hahn argues, are a central part of the arrival of Jim Crow.

Virginia experienced some of these political challenges and negotiations. Republicans never gained a large hold within the state after the Civil War, even though popular mobilization had happened fairly rapidly. In some areas, the black majority was able to contest or...