Use the text below to answer the question.
Slavery ended in America with the Civil War. But racist local governments (and a generally racist American population) worked hard during Reconstruction to prevent blacks from achieving real freedom, let alone any kind of equality.

In 1896 the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson declared segregation legal, saying that "separate but equal" was the law of the land. Soon the South passed hundreds of local segregation, or Jim Crow laws to keep blacks out of white restaurants, factories, train cars and schools. Jim Crow laws also kept blacks away from the ballot through ballot taxes, literacy requirements and violent intimidation. Lynchings of black men occurred throughout the South. For African Americans, freedom was a dream deferred. It took a large number of people willing to fight for their rights to change the racist status quo in America.

Plessy v. Ferguson legalized

A
ballot taxes.

B
slavery.

C
segregation.

D
activism.