[1] Their justifications were articulated on a basis of discontent with governor Adelbert Ames' Republican administration, including spurious charges of corruption and high taxes.
To end election violence and ensure that freedmen were excluded from politics, the Democrat-dominated state legislature passed a new constitution in 1890, which effectively disenfranchised and disarmed most blacks by erecting barriers to voter registration and firearms ownership.
White armed patrols prevented blacks from voting; Democrats succeeded in defeating all Republican city officials in the August election.
"[9] Unlike the Ku Klux Klan at the time (which was mostly defunct by then), the Red Shirts operated and paraded openly, with members known in local areas.
They were joined in the violence by white paramilitary groups known as "rifle clubs," who frequently provoked riots at Republican rallies, shooting down dozens of blacks in the ensuing conflicts.
He feared being accused of "bayonet rule" – which he believed would undoubtedly be exploited by Democrats to carry Ohio in that year's state elections.
The violence went unchecked and the plan worked as intended: during Mississippi's 1875 statewide election, five counties with large black majorities polled only 12, 7, 4, 2, and 0 Republican votes, respectively.
In 1890 the Mississippi Democratic-dominated legislature drafted and passed a new constitution, which effectively disenfranchised and disarmed most blacks by erecting barriers to firearms ownership[4][5] as well as voter registration, by a method of poll taxes, subjective literacy tests, and more restrictive residency requirements.
[6] Through the turn of the century to 1908, Southern Democrats disenfranchised most black people and many poor whites (especially in Alabama) by enacting such new state constitutions.
Black people were effectively excluded from participating in the formal political system of the American South until the late 1960s, after gaining federal legislation to support and defend their constitutional right to vote.