The “bargain of 1877” between leaders of the two major parties, which resolved the disputed election of 1876, had elevated Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency while acknowledging Democratic control of all the southern states. Yet the full imposition of the new system of white supremacy known as Jim Crow did not take place until the 1890s. In the 1880s, blacks, although in diminished numbers, continued to vote and hold office, and black litigants won a surprising number of victories.
