What policy or social order followed Reconstruction, enforcing segregation in the South?

• A. Emancipation Proclamation
• B. Jim Crow laws
• C. Fifteenth Amendment
• D. Civil Rights Act

Answer: (B)

After Reconstruction, a system of laws and practices emerged in the South to enforce racial segregation and maintain white supremacy. These rules, known as Jim Crow laws, required separate facilities and services for Black and white people—things like separate schools, buses, drinking fountains, waiting rooms, and even separate entrances in public buildings. They also helped justify voter suppression through measures such as literacy tests and poll taxes in many places, all aimed at keeping African Americans disenfranchised while preserving a racial hierarchy.

This is the best answer because Jim Crow laws specifically describe the set of legal controls that codified segregation across public life in the South during the post–Reconstruction era. The other options describe actions or amendments that either freed enslaved people or protected or expanded rights, rather than establishing the system of segregation that followed Reconstruction.