Black Codes was the south's way for trying to get back slavery. The Black Codes restricted African Americans rights for what they could and couldn’t do restricting their freedom and making them to work for whites still still being paid but at low wages and treated no different from how they were during slavery. The freedmen could not work for themselves only for a white. The Black Codes was the South’s way to try and bring back slavery.
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.
Some northerners believed that the black codes where a backdoor attempt at reestablishing slavery. I do agree, I agree because they wanted slavery they wanted people to work for them and not have to pay them. The black codes were put into place to restrict what blacks did. When blacks gained rights the black codes basically just took them away. White’s would scare them into working for them and the black codes just helped that. They would either pay them really low wages or put them debt. This is just a few reasons why I believe that the black codes were just a backdoor attempt to get slavery back.
The common belief among Southerners was that raising cotton, rice, and sugar were the only reasons why blacks were on the earth. They further felt that it was absurd for blacks to pursue their own happiness. A very separate set of laws, the black codes, were drawn up in the South that greatly limited the freedom of African Americans. The black codes regulated nearly every area of freedmen’s lives. These codes outlawed marriage between blacks and whites, forbid blacks from having the right to bear arms, punished whites for distributing any weapons or alcohol to blacks, and placed orphaned minors in an apprenticeship under a
The black codes were laws made by the south, Mississippi in particular. These laws restricted the freedom of recently freed slaves. After losing the Civil War the South was not happy and they were not about to give up their slaves. They did everything to preserve slavery and keep their free labor. The black codes were not right or fair. After Abraham Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation all slaves were supposed to be freed, of course it didn't go into immediate affect until the ending of the Civil War. This did not go into full affect until over two years later. African Americans could not marry anyone other than other African Americans. There was many cases of an American American man kissing a white woman and another white person
The black codes, written on July 3, 1865, were “a series of discriminatory state laws” (Open Stax page 458) which made it illegal for African American men to be in town limits unless they had a written document from their employer saying that they were allowed, (Document B). These documents aimed to maintain the social and economic structure of the previous slave society in the absence of slavery itself. The black codes made strict regulations on when African American men were allowed to be in town without a white employer, including not letting them “be on the streets after 10 pm” and that they could not “live within the town limits” (Document B). The black codes aimed to reverse the effects of the 14th amendment by allowing them to own land but only under strict guidelines. In Document C, it states that “you all are not free yet and will not be until Congress sits” meaning that African Americans were not viewed as freedmen by Southerners, but still as their slaves because Congress did not enforce the 13th and 14th amendments. The black codes also influenced white men to beat and shoot any black men or women that tried to escape the South. This was cause because white plantation owners did not want to lose their workers because then they would have to pay a significantly higher wage to any other workers. The black codes also forced freedmen and women to sign contracts saying that they would only work for one employer, making it difficult for any man to raise enough money to buy their own land. As the book states. “blacks could not positively influence wages and conditions by choosing to work for the employer who gave them the best terms” (Openstax pg 459). These contracts lowered the competition between plantation owners so they were not influenced to raise wages based on other owners. The black codes deprived African Americans of their rights to vote, serve on juries, carry or
One of the main goals of Reconstruction was to create equality for African Americans, but the rules and laws that were created, were not enforced by the government. Soon after the 13th Amendment was passed, most Southern states started to enforce Black Codes. These codes, as described in St. Landry’s Parish’s Black Codes, required African Americans to work under a white man, not to have a house or land, and to receive permission for meetings, preaching, carrying weapons, and selling items (Document 6). The purpose of the St. Landry’s Black Codes, and Black Codes in general, was to inform the public about the rules African Americans have to follow, but also to maintain the social order of whites coming before blacks, and to limit African American’s rights. Southern whites continued to take away African Americans rights throughout Reconstruction.
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
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
I think that Black codes were very cruel to all African Americans, and were used to single out African American. Even though they had all the rights that white people did , but no one really saw it as that. I also think that black codes were unequal in every sense and being because many people viewed african americans as nothing, just because of their skin color. I have heard of the black codes in the movie called “ The Help” when Elaine Stein was asking Aibileen Clark to help her get it known of what it is like to be the help and Aibileen brought up that she wasn't allowed to do it, and if she were to ever get caught she would get into trouble. I have also heard about the black codes briefly in my previous history classes but did not go
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.
David W. Blight of Yale University said, “The nation needed to heal the sectional divide in order to function as one country.” Healing to African Americans meant trying to understand their role as a citizen, reuniting family members, and establishing their new freedoms as citizens. Many problems interfered with this process. Black codes, Redemption, and Jim Crow are all examples of initial offering and then revoking of freedoms toward African Americans throughout Reconstruction. African Americans did not lose without a fight though; some even maintained it. Blacks resisted their revocation of their freedom through the development of Alliances and Leagues, which helped them liberate themselves of black codes and white supremacy. African
From Reconstruction through the end of the 1920s, there were multiple encounters of people from all different types of races that have dramatically changed the face of the United States. Old immigrates, White Anglo Saxton Protestants, were the only people who were thought of as true Americans and not outsiders at the time. The 13th amendment abolished the majority of slavery and African American hoped to be finally freed after years of bondage. However, this is far from the end of their issues and there are many more racial barriers to be crossed from not only African Americans, but also for others coming into the country.
Slavery was not a word that was unknown in the United States of America; the word was at the tip of almost everyone’s tongue, only it came with many names. After the civil war, slavery became more pronounced for the black people. The south then thought something ought to be done and passed laws called the black codes which begun the limitation of blacks’ rights and separated them from the whites; white supremacy began. Before, these laws would have been unnecessary because most of the black people were slaves and they were already segregated in public places like schools and theatres. In 1866, Congress did not like this and they responded to these laws by putting a stop to it. Republicans had managed to begin reconstruction on the society and understand the black community. But in 1877 things took a turn for the worse when the Democratic parties recovered control and stopped the progress of reconstruction. This in turn caused the reverse of all the progress made in the past few years to understand the black community; they lost their rights to hold political seats, vote and generally participate as though they were members of the community. Slowly but surely, the south started to restore their racially unfair laws. The aim of the laws? To ensure segregation and alienation of the black community. One of the main powers taken away was the right to vote and they did this by imposing poll taxes, having expensive fees to be paid at the voting booths and
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.
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.