...From emancipation to the turn of the century, the Ku Klux Klan operated as a paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party in the South. The Klan, nightriders, red shirts, and other white terrorists intimidated African Americans with personal attacks, school burnings, and lynching’s. African Americans rarely served as policemen, sheriffs, or deputies before the late 1940s. During the 1950s and 1960s, the connections between municipal and state governments, law enforcement, and racial violence were well known by officials and citizens alike. White officers were known to harass black people, disrupt black neighborhoods, and assault black women. In 1954, the supreme court rules that separate facilities by race were unconstitutional. Eventually, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 ended Jim Crow Laws. Now people couldn’t discriminate on any racial basis. Blacks felt protected because the amendments gave them rights...
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