Charles B. Aycock (1859-1912)
Reconstruction was already ending when the university reopened in 1875. All across the South, white Democrats took control of state governments from biracial Republican coalitions, often with the help of violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan. In 1900, North Carolina adopted a literacy test to ban black voting entirely, and other southern states took similar measures. New segregation laws required separation of the races in all public facilities. In North Carolina, UNC alumni like Charles B. Aycock, Alfred Moore Waddell, Robert W. Winston, and Josephus Daniels took leading roles in the disenfranchisement campaign.