Editing History of Florida (section)

===Disenfranchisement===
{{See also|List of Jim Crow law examples by State#Florida|Black Codes (United States)#Florida}}
From 1885 to 1889, after regaining power, the white-dominated state legislature passed statutes to impose [[poll tax]]es and other barriers to [[voter registration]] and voting, to eliminate voting by black people and poor whites. These two groups had threatened white Democratic power with a [[populism|populist]] coalition. As these groups were stripped from voter rolls, white Democrats established power in a one-party state, as happened across the South.

In this period, white violence rose against black people, particularly in the form of [[lynching]]s, which reached a peak around the turn of the century.<ref name="davis"/>

The [[Great Freeze]] of 1894–95 ruined citrus crops, which had a detrimental ripple effect on the economy of Central Florida in particular.<ref>{{cite book |last=McMurry|first=Charles Alexander|date=1908|title=Type Studies from the Geography of the United States|publisher=Macmillan & Company|page=81}}</ref> By 1900 the state's African Americans numbered more than 200,000, roughly 44 percent of the total population. This was the same proportion as before the Civil War, and they were effectively disenfranchised.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}} Not being able to vote meant they could not sit on juries, and were not elected to local, state or federal offices. They also were not recruited for [[law enforcement]] or other government positions. After the end of Reconstruction, the Florida legislature passed [[Jim Crow laws]] establishing [[racial segregation]] in public facilities and transportation. Separate railroad cars or sections of cars for different races were required beginning in 1887.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Stephenson|first=Gilbert Thomas|date=May 1909|title=The Separation of The Races in Public Conveyances|journal=The American Political Science Review|volume=3|issue=2|pages=180–204|jstor=1944727|doi=10.2307/1944727|s2cid=146984968 }}</ref> Separate waiting rooms at railroad stations were required beginning in 1909.<ref>{{cite book|author=State of Florida|title=The Revised General Statutes of Florida: Prepared Under Authority of Chapter 6930, Acts 1915, Chapter 7347, Acts 1917, and Chapter 7838, Acts 1919, Laws of Florida, Volume 2|url={{Google books|55RCAQAAMAAJ|page=2306|plainurl=yes}}|year=1920|publisher=E.O. Painter Print|page=2306}}</ref>

Without political representation, African Americans found that their facilities were underfunded and they were pushed into a second-class position. For more than six decades, white Democrats controlled virtually all the state's seats in Congress, which were apportioned based on the total population of the state rather than only the whites who voted.