D) Found themselves increasingly left out of the political process because of poll taxes and literacy tests.
Explanation:
After the Civil War, despite their defeat and the passing of the 14th Amendment in 1868, southern states passed legislation whose practical purpose was to keep black people, formally free, in poverty, without access to education and being unable to exercise their civic rights such as voting. Those laws later became known as the Jim Crow laws. Black Americans lived in a segregation system de facto in the South that denied them dignity and a decent living standard.
