In 1865, four million Americans who were called slaves simply because they were born black, were now free with the expectation that they would enjoy all civil liberties. The Reconstruction period following the Civil War granted freedmen various rights, but in little more than a decade the promise of emancipation and equal rights faded, replaced by a rigid system of laws designed to prevent blacks from experiencing any of the newly created rights acquired. which is known as the Jim Crow era, the American form of racial apartheid that separated Americans into two groups: whites, the so-called superiors, and blacks, the inferiors. The phase that began in 1877 was ushered in by the withdrawal of Union troops from the South that would leave the future of the former slaves in the hands of white Southerners. The rise of Jim Crow segregation in the 1890s was not a mere expression of racism but developed from a complex and corrupt working of many political causes such as the removal of Northern troops and the disintegration of Republican influence, and economic interests such as Panic of 1893, which forced separation of blacks to avoid competition, in the impoverished post-Reconstruction South. The unique structure of slavery in the pre-Civil War period required close interaction between blacks and whites, which made segregation practically inconvenient. With the blacks who worked in the white family there were bonds of intimacy; There was affection and sometimes blood relations between them. They lived under the same roof, attended the same church and shared family life. There was a strong relationship between blacks and whites, which could not be changed overnight. As quoted in Woodward's book, Sir George Campbell, a member of parliament visited the South, in 1879, for...... half of the paper ......Works Cited• Woodward, C. Vann. The strange career of Jim Crow. New York, Oxford University Press, 1966• Bacote, A. Clarence. “Negro Proscriptions, Protests, and Proposed Settlements in Georgia, 1880–1908.” The Journal of Southern History. vol. 25, no. 4, November 1959, 471-498 • Harlan, John Marshal. “Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson.” Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History, edited by Eric Foner—3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011• Wells, Ida B. “Crusade for Justice.” Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History, edited by Eric Foner—3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011• The Seattle Republican. “Jim Crow Cardom,” February 15, 1907. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025811/1907-02-15/ed-1/seq-3/;words=crow+jim+law+laws? date1=1836&rows=20&searchType=basic&state=&date2=1922&proxtext=jim+crow+law&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&index=1