What were the results of the compromise of 1877?

The Compromise of 1877 meant mainly that the old white elite of the South, stripped of its citizen privileges after the Civil War for its support of the Confederation, regained full prominence in the state governments, and that the Democratic Party achieved a broad base of popular support among white voters of the South, giving rise to its "Solid South" in force until the mid-twentieth century, with the ideological change of the New Deal. The Republican Party and unionist sympathizers retained their strength only in some less developed regions of Tennessee and Kentucky, traditionally hostile to the landlords of Virginia or Georgia.

The negative consequence was that the black population, newly liberated from slavery since 1863, lost the protection of the authorities designated by the federal government, and were practically abandoned before the new democratic leaders, who had been supporters of the defeated Confederate States. of America but now that the Republican Party restored their old political influence in the South. In fact, this new situation strengthened the white segregationists to establish the Jim Crow Laws and maintain racial discrimination against the descendants of slaves, marginalizing them from their most elemental citizen rights for almost eighty years. For this purpose, the doctrine of "equal but separate" was invoked: the freedom and citizenship of the black population was recognized, but their basic rights were in practice severely restricted.