A Short Summary: The Black Codes

Blanche Bruce, Robert DeLarge, Jefferson Long, Joseph Rainey, Benjamin Turner, and Josiah Walls are names of 6 of the 17 African Americans elected into the United States Congress. This rise in freedom led many Africans to believe that they could start new lives, but that wasn’t the case. The plan to free the naturalized colored people and give them immunities failed due to states passing the black codes which limited colored peoples’ immunities. The Ku Klux Klan wreaked havoc as they would torture and kill many colored people. The colored people were once again being discriminated and not given their immunities.

     Imagine yourself wrongly convicted of a crime. You spent years in jail awaiting your release date. It finally comes, and when they let you out, they slap handcuffs around your wrists and tell you every single action you do. In a nutshell, that’s how the Black Codes worked. The southerners wanted control over the blacks after the Civil War, and states created their own Black Codes.

Soon after the war, and after slavery was ended, there was a shortage of people to work for those who once had slaves as their main workforce. This posed a challenge for the southern economy. So during the constitutional convention of 1865 various states including South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi included language in their state constitutions that regulated and managed the now free slaves. This served at the basis for the Black Codes -- a series of codes that restricted the rights of African Americans. These Black Codes made it difficult for former slaves to work in a labor economy that wasn’t based on low wages and debt tactics, as well as restricted them from owning property, conduct business, and move freely through public spaces.

Black Codes were enacted in 1865 and 1866 by new southern state governments. Similar to the Slave Codes that existed before the Civil War, these Black Codes sought to regulate past slaves lives such as prohibiting freed slaves to serve on juries or to testify against a white person in court. Although the Black Codes granted African Americans to possess and sell property and legalized black marriages, interracial marriage between white and black Americans was outlawed. Unfortunately, some states even went further to control the lives of African Americans by limiting their economic freedoms such as, preventing any African Americans from purchasing or renting farmland in the state of Mississippi. As a result of decreeing the Black Codes, a division

The Black Codes was masked slavery. Other than some new, small leniencies, Mississippi succeeded in making laws that that still controlled African Americans. These Sections were created for the South to bend the rules by exploiting children. These laws were aimed at minors under the age of 18 that were orphans or whose parents were unable to financially provide for them. At this point, the child would be placed back in the “care” of their former master or mistress. These codes stated that the best interest of the minor was to be protected, that they were to be fed, clothed, treated humanely; taught to read if under the age of fifteen and to receive medical attention when sick. In return, the minor, or apprentice would be bounded by indenture until the age of eighteen for a female and twenty one for a male. It was also acceptable for the former owner to chastise under what was allowed for punishment by the common law. If the child were to escape, it was permitted to place the child in jail if refused to return. That only discharge from a master/mistress would be possible if the courts believed the apprentice had a good cause to quit. Those are just few examples to begin with. These codes essentially worked to separate the races in all aspects of life from children to adults, such as marriage, which would result in life in prison if wedded to a white person. They also were not allowed to own any type of weapon unless they served in the United States military, and were to be fined and possibly imprisoned to even drinking liquor to a level of intoxication. Over all, these are just a few of the examples that were laws to “freed” men to be kept

Black Codes is the mainstream name given to the statutes went by Southern slave states, before and instantly after the American Civil War. From the pioneer time frame, provinces and states had passed laws that oppressed free Blacks. In the South, these were for the most part incorporated into slave codes; the objective was to lessen impact of free blacks as a result of their potential impact on slaves. Restrictions included denying them from voting, remaining battle ready, and assembling in gatherings for love and figuring out how to read and write. A noteworthy reason for these laws was to save slavery. In the initial two years after the Civil War, white ruled southern legislatures passed Black Codes displayed after the before slave codes.

1: Black Codes: A body of laws, statutes, and rules enacted by southern states immediately after the Civil War to regain control over the freed slaves, maintain white supremacy, and ensure the continued supply of cheap labor.

After the Civil War, the southern whites were extremely resentful and bitter. In 1865 the southern states began issuing “black codes,” which were laws made subsequent to the Civil War that had the effect of limiting the civil rights and civil liberties of blacks. This term tends to refer to the legislation passed by southern states to control the labor, migration, and other activities of newly freed slaves. When the slaves were freed, they still had

For my research topic I chose “Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws.” I chose this topic because I have heard about Jim Crow Laws many times through television, books, and history classes but never in depth. I wanted to know more about the topic, along with black codes, which I have never heard about and didn’t know existed. Choosing this topic allowed me to gain more knowledge on both of these topics. Before this paper, my knowledge of Jim Crows laws was that they were laws that White Southerners were using to keep former slaves as insubordinates to them. I learned that this is the basic idea and purpose of the Jim Crow laws, but they were also used to prevent complaints and issues, with the separate but equal laws, that said that black were to receive equal, but separate public facilities and buildings. What I wanted to know is how black codes differed from Jim Crow laws. To answer this question I found out the history behind them, the differences and the similarities, and in that, was able to grow as a researcher.

In 1865, the American government successfully passed the thirteenth amendment: ending the institution of slavery in America. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The thirteenth amendment opened up economic opportunity for African Americans as slaves were no longer owned by someone else. However, not long after the thirteenth amendment was passed, former slaveholders and southerners created the black codes. Black Codes were a set of laws intended to restrict African American freedoms, causing them to go into low wage labor. A black code passed in the state of South Carolina stated, “To do farm work, a black in South Carolina had to have a written contract, attested to by white witnesses; failure to obtain one before commencing to work was a misdemeanor

When the Civil War ended and slaves were free, Black Codes were established by states. Black Codes were specifically made to limit the freedom of African Americans and forced them to work in poor conditions with low wages. As explained by

Black codes were one of many ways the states got around the federal government's amendments. These codes were laws that applied to African American people in the state. All of these codes were very restrictive and demining. They stopped African Americans from doing a lot of things such as owning or renting a house or apartment in the town of Opelousas. Many other towns had such laws that stopped African americans from living in town, coming into town, and even having meetings in town.

The purpose of the black codes was to keep black people from voting. The result was the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which prohibited using race as a reason to prevent people from voting. The emancipation of black slaves in post Civil War America did not run smoothly. Though the slaves had been freed in name, many did not feel secure about giving black people rights. The black codes prevented black Americans from voting and restricted their

With the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, millions of slaves were given their freedom. Although these millions of slaves are now free, the rebuilding on the South during the Reconstruction introduced many obstacles. These obstacles include sharecropping, tenant farming, the “black codes”, and not to forget the lack of education and rights African Americans had at the time. Sharecropping is consisted of a slave renting land from a white man and having to give up a portion of their crops at the end of each year. The black codes were basically laws against what type of labor African Americans can be given. In the state of South Carolina, blacks were only able to work as farmers or servants; the same jobs these free people worked as slaves. After decades of slavery, blacks were still under the control of the white people due to lack of education and rights.

Despite the black codes had provided rights such as the marriage legalization and the ownership of property, they violated the free labor principle and denied the African-Americans the right to vote, and sue any white man. Foner (2014) found “In response to planter’s demands that freed people be required to work on the plantations, the Black Codes declared that those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested and hired out to white landowners” (p. 570) . In fact, it was a totally failure of what freedom was supposed to be.