662 ★ CHAPTER 17 Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad
discussed in Chapter 19. Until then, the vast majority of African- Americans
remained in the South.
The Decline of Black Politics
Neither black voting nor black officeholding came to an abrupt end in 1877.
Blacks continued to cast ballots in large numbers, although Democrats solidified
their control of state and local affairs by redrawing district lines and substituting
appointive for elective officials in counties with black majorities. A few blacks
even served in Congress in the 1880s and 1890s. Nonetheless, political opportu-
nities became more and more restricted. Not until the 1990s would the number
of black legislators in the South approach the level seen during Reconstruction.
For black men of talent and ambition, other avenues— business, the law,
the church— increasingly seemed to offer greater opportunities for personal
advancement and community service than politics. The banner of political
leadership passed to black women activists. The National Association of Col-
ored Women, founded in 1896, brought together local and regional women’s
clubs to press for both women’s rights and racial uplift. Most female activists
emerged from the small urban black middle class and preached the necessity of
A photograph of townspeople in Nicodemus, a community established by members of the
1879–1880 “Exodus” of southern African- Americans to Kansas.