The document discusses the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow laws in the Southern United States. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, the federal troops withdrew from the South and the Freedmen's Bureau was shut down. Without these protections, racist Southern states passed Jim Crow laws that segregated public spaces and denied African Americans their civil and political rights, such as requiring poll taxes to vote. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan used violence and intimidation to enforce racial segregation and prevent African Americans from exercising their rights.