This occurred as the other, more industrial, interests of the broad based party dominated their platform; leaving the blacks to face the wrath of the Southerners. A final blow to the hopes for national protection of African American civil rights was dealt with The Force Bill of 1890. In this bill, the Senate objected to the idea of Congress protecting African- American voters in the South through federal supervision of state elections. (McDuffie, 117) It was sign that Congress, and its northern constituents, had finally lost interest in the cause. As the opportunity for economic advancement increased after the Civil War, the North felt as though it had done its part and both the President and Congress hastily turned their backs on the new, colored American Citizens.
With the protection and support of Northerners lost, the blacks in the South were held hostage by white supremacists. Although the 13th Amendment stated that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude. shall exist within the United States," a new agricultural system, the crop lien, kept the blacks under the control of their (former) "masters". With unfair trade practices and a limited amount of capital being exchanged, the blacks in the South were not free to do as they pleased; once again they were caught in a system that profited the white Southerners. These whites also expressed their extreme racist tendencies through the acts of violence by the Klu Klux Klan. The Klan performed acts of extreme violence, targeting blacks and whites, who were considered to be Republicans or sympathetic to the black cause. Their success resulted in violence becoming a successful political tool in the Southern arena. Although the official title was gone, the whites had managed to reassert their status as "masters" to the Southern Blacks through scare tactics and "economic policies". .
The Supreme Court between 1873 and 1898 expressed the weakness to resisting racism in all areas of the nation through its successive decisions.