African Americans After Reconstruction Dbq

     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.

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 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.

The Black Codes were laws passed on the state and local level in the United States to limit the basic human rights and civil liberties of blacks.

These laws were passed between 1865 and 1866. Black Codes were “laws passed by Southern state legislatures that restricted African American’s rights to testify against whites, serve on juries or in state militias, or vote” (Class Notes, 9/18/17). This gave African Americans no freedom to accuse whether a white person did a crime and no right to vote. On some states, these laws also prevented blacks to own their land (Class Notes, 9/20/17). Having no freedom of owning a land prevented African Americans on having a stable and prosperous life.

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.

Slavery was a huge issue that both helped and hurt the Union during the Civil War, and later in the Reconstruction. African Americans had to make sacrifices in order to make reality their dream of being freed from the chains of slavery. America reached many changes through the beginnings of Civil Rights legislations, the changes in the power of government, as well as the amount of racism and it’s effects on society.

Despite the struggle African Americans faced before and during the Civil War, they were able to thrive socially, politically, and economically after reconstruction. Before reconstruction and the Civil War, African Americans had been enslaved since the early 17th century. Slavery had been thriving because of the adoption of the cotton gin in the South. Slaves were mistreated and abused far too long and would eventually gain their freedom by the establishment of the 13th amendment. However, the conflicts that they faced previously would not be gone entirely.

The black code gave slaves “freedom” but they were not equal citizens. They were all to keep the whites empowered while working blacks even as freedmen. They defined a person of color from having a quarter of African blood to having any. They declared blacks vagrant if they had no job or permanent home. They were never allowed to vote and states limited the black property rights and jobs.

“Sharecropping meant that they divided their work with the owner at the end of the year”. (1) The Black Codes also inhibited migration of free African Americans. Although the Union victory in the Civil War gave some four million slaves their freedom, most of them ended up right back on the plantations they had worked on before because they had nowhere else to

African Americans throughout the road to gain racial equality exercised many methods in order to attain such liberties. We start our exploration by viewing the most paramount methods to acquire racial equality; these methods included lobbying public officials through the court system and through peaceful public protests. We'll lastly address the violent methods used to gain racial equality but see how they were mostly unavailing.

Black Codes were created to manage the affairs of the emancipated blacks. The Black Codes targeted to ensure a stable labor force. But it refused for blacks to serve on jury and not letting them to rent or lease land.

Thaddeus Stevens, a political man, held a place in the House of Representatives. His main concern was the economic opportunity for slaves. Stevens wanted them to be able to make a living on their own, and not depend on the “white man” as they had done all their lives. Thinking almost on these same lines was

The Reconstruction era was put into effect by Congress in 1866 and lasted until 1877. Reconstruction was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War. The reconstruction plan granted the means for readmitting the southern states into the Union, and tried to come up with the methods by which whites and blacks could live together in a non-slave society. America's position as a country was established on principles of freedom but those beliefs were weakened by slavery. At the end of the Civil War, many blacks felt that they were entitled to start collecting the benefits that had been denied for so many years. Being able to vote, own land and have a voice in political affairs were all goals that they believed were reachable.

Throughout the history of the country, America has been considered a fairly racist union. From the workplaces to the society, as an Asian, I felt there's a strong barrier between white and black people, although I felt a little bit of racial among us. In this essay, I will talk about the major racial issue of this country through out my experiences.