group known as the White League established chapters in numerous parishes, and it worked to disrupt Republican meetings and voting. Due to a national compromise, in 1877 the federal government withdrew its troops from the South. The Democratic Party quickly regained control of the state legislature and politics; its candidates won every election for governor until 1980. The exclusion of most blacks from the political system lasted through the 1960s. Since 1980 the governorship has been split between four Democrats and four Republicans. Rise of the Solid South Throughout the 1880s, the Democratic-dominated legislature in Louisiana passed Jim Crow laws and institutionalized racial segregation, as did the legislatures of other southern states. For a brief period, a Republican-Populist alliance gained power in the state house. Seeking to secure its power and to prevent such a challenge again, the white Democratic elite of this time worked to disenfranchise both poor whites and blacks, in order to end challenges from the Republican Party or Populists. Following Mississippi's passage of a new constitution in 1890 that disenfranchised most blacks, in 1898 the Democratically held state legislature of Louisiana passed a new constitution with provisions related to voter registration intended to disenfranchise most black voters; many poor white voters were also disenfranchised. The new constitution required payment of a poll tax (beyond the reach of many poor farmers who often traded in goods), literacy tests (which were administered in a discriminatory fashion, excluding educated blacks as well as those who were illiterate), property requirements, and a grandfather clause. The latter gave illiterate whites an opportunity to register if their ancestors had voted in 1867 or before the war, when blacks were excluded from voting. During the Solid South era, Louisiana democrats passed laws that provided for segregation. Blacks were essentially excluded from the political system for decades into the 1960s. Barred from voting, they were also excluded from juries and from holding local office. With the political system dominated by whites, black schools and facilities were consistently underfunded. In addition, their interests were not represented at the state or federal level. For instance, federal programs under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, developed to deal with widespread poverty during the Great Depression, overlooked black urban and rural needs in the South. Civil rights era In the era after World War II, black veterans and other leaders pressed to have their constitutional rights recognized: to