 This was followed by a period which white Southerners labeled "Redemption," during which white-dominated state legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising most Blacks and many poor whites through a combination of constitutional amendments and election laws beginning in 1890.The white Southern Democrats' memory of Reconstruction played a major role in imposing the system of white supremacy and second-class citizenship for blacks using laws known as Jim Crow laws.Reconstruction addressed how the 11 seceding rebel states in the South would regain what the Constitution calls a "republican form of government" and be re-seated in Congress, the civil status of the former leaders of the Confederacy, and the constitutional and legal status of freedmen, especially their civil rights and whether they should be given the right to vote.