tests, residency requirements and other devices that effectively disenfranchised nearly all blacks and tens of thousands of poor Whites. Hundreds of thousands of people were removed from voter registration rolls soon after these provisions were implemented. In Alabama, for instance, in 1900 fourteen Black Belt counties had a total of 79,311 voters on the rolls; by June 1, 1903, after the new constitution was passed, registration had dropped to just 1,081. Statewide Alabama in 1900 had 181,315 blacks eligible to vote, but by 1903 only 2,980 were registered, although at least 74,000 were literate. From 1900 to 1903, the number of White registered voters fell by more than 40,000, although the white population grew overall. By 1941, more poor Whites than blacks had been disenfranchised in Alabama, mostly due to effects of the cumulative poll tax; estimates were that 600,000 Whites and 500,000 blacks had been disenfranchised. In addition to being disenfranchised, African Americans and poor Whites were shut out of the political process as Southern legislatures passed Jim Crow laws imposing segregation in public facilities and places. The discrimination, segregation, and disenfranchisement lasted well into the later decades of the 20th century. Those who could not vote were also ineligible to run for office or serve on juries, so they were shut out of all offices at the local and state as well as federal levels. While Congress had actively intervened for more than 20 years in elections in the South which the House Elections Committee judged to be flawed, after 1896, it backed off from intervening. Many Northern legislators were outraged about the disenfranchisement of blacks and some proposed reducing Southern representation in Congress, but they never managed to accomplish this, as Southern representatives formed a strong one-party voting bloc for decades. Although educated African Americans mounted legal challenges (with many secretly funded by educator Booker T. Washington and his northern allies), the Supreme Court upheld Mississippi's and Alabama's provisions in its rulings in Williams v. Mississippi (1898) and Giles v. Harris (1903). Religious dimension People in the movement chose the term "Redemption" from Christian theology. Historian Daniel W. Stowell concludes that White Southerners appropriated the term to describe the political transformation they desired, that is, the end of Reconstruction. This term helped unify numerous White voters, and encompassed efforts to purge southern society of its sins and to remove Republican political leaders. It also represented the birth