Ms. Rebecca and Louis
Economic Justice, Fall 2016
Name: _________________________
Section: ____ EJ#: ____
3.2D The Black Codes
Focus Question
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R1
R2
R3
Standard
I can use CHUNQs to analyze a variety of sources.
I can summarize and paraphrase the main idea of a variety of sources.
I can answer comprehension and extension questions about a variety of
sources.
Grade
Do Now
1. If they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “All Men Are Created Equal,” why do
you think that early Americans still allowed slavery to exist in their new country?
2. What do you think is more important to a person’s identity: their class or their race? Why?
3. Have you heard the phrase “40 Acres and a Mule” before? If so, what does it mean? If not,
what do you think it means?
4. Have you heard of the “Black Codes” before? If so, what were they? If not, what do you
think they were?
Read and CHUNQS this excerpt from The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander:
The end of slavery created an extraordinary dilemma for Southern white
society. Without the labor of former slaves, the region’s economy would surely
collapse.
Following the Civil War, the economic and political infrastructure of the South
was in shambles. Plantation owners were suddenly destitute, and state
governments, shackled by war debt, were penniless. Large amounts of real
estate and other property had been destroyed in the war, industry was
disorganized, and hundreds of thousands of men had been killed or maimed.
Add to this the sudden presence of 4 million newly freed slaves, and the picture
becomes even more complicated. Former slaves literally walked away from
their plantations, causing panic and outrage among plantation owners. Large
numbers of former slaves roamed the highways in early years after the war.
Most white people believed African Americans lacked the proper motivation to
work, prompting the provisional Southern legislatures to adopt the notorious
black codes.
Nine Southern states adopted vagrancy laws – which essentially made it a criminal
offense not to work and were applied selectively to blacks – and eight of those
states enacted convict laws allowing for the hiring-out of county prisoners to
plantation owners and private companies. Prisoners were forced to work for little or
no pay.”
1. According to Alexander, what was it like in the South after slavery was abolished?
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2. What did the South do in order to deal with their new situation?
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Mississippi Black Codes of 1865
Below are excerpts from Mississippi law from 1865. Together with other similar pieces of
legislation, these laws became known as the “Black Code.” Most Southern states enacted these
types of laws after the Civil War.
Read and CHUNQS the examples of Black Codes below:
An Act to Confer Civil Rights on Freedmen, and for other Purposes
Section 7. Every civil officer shall, and every person may, arrest and carry
back to his or her legal employer any freedman, free negro, or mulatto who
shall have quit the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his
or her term of service without good cause; and said officer and person shall
be entitled to receive for arresting and carrying back every deserting
employee aforesaid the sum of five dollars, and ten cents per mile from the
place of arrest to the place of delivery; and the same shall be paid by the
employer, and held as a set off for so much against the wages of said
deserting employee: Provided, that said arrested party, after being so
returned, may appeal to the justice of the peace or member of the board of
police of the county, who, on notice to the alleged employer, shall try
summarily whether said appellant is legally employed by the alleged
employer, and has good cause to quit said employer. Either party shall have
the right of appeal to the county court, pending which the alleged deserter
shall be remanded to the alleged employer or otherwise disposed of, as shall
be right and just; and the decision of the county court shall be final.
An Act to Amend the Vagrant Laws of the State
Section 2. All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes in this State, over the
age of eighteen years, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or
thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawful
assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time, and all white
persons assembling themselves with freedmen, Free negroes or mulattoes, or
usually associating with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, on terms of
equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freed woman, freed negro
or mulatto, shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined
in a sum not exceeding, in the case of a freedman, free negro or mulatto, fifty
dollars, and a white man two hundred dollars, and imprisonment at the
discretion of the court, the free negro not exceeding ten days, and the white
man not exceeding six months.
An Act to Amend the Vagrant Laws of the State
Section 5. All fines and forfeitures collected by the provisions of this act
shall be paid into the county treasury of general county purposes, and in
case of any freedman, free negro or mulatto shall fail for five days after
the imposition of any or forfeiture upon him or her for violation of any of
the provisions of this act to pay the same, that it shall be, and is hereby,
made the duty of the sheriff of the proper county to hire out said
freedman, free negro or mulatto, to any person who will, for the shortest
period of service, pay said fine and forfeiture and all costs: Provided, a
preference shall be given to the employer, if there be one, in which case
the employer shall be entitled to deduct and retain the amount so paid
from the wages of such freedman, free negro or mulatto, then due or to
become due; and in case freedman, free negro or mulatto cannot hire out,
he or she may be dealt with as a pauper.
Paraphrase the main idea of each section in your own words below:
Main Idea of Section 7
Main Idea of Section 2
Main Idea of Section 5
3. Read the text of the Thirteenth Amendment below and write it in your own words.
13th Amendment:
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.
In Your Own Words:
4. Did the 13th Amendment completely prohibit slavery? Explain.
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Document 1:
Modern-Day Slavery in America's Prison Workforce
Beth Schwartzapfel in The American Prospect, May 18, 2014
About half of the 1.6 million Americans serving time in prison have full-time jobs.
They aren’t counted in standard labor surveys, but prisoners make up a sizable
workforce: with 870,000 working inmates, roughly the same number of workers as in
the states of Vermont and Rhode Island combined. Despite decades’ worth of talk
about reform—of giving prisoners the skills and resources they need to build a life
after prison—the vast majority of these workers, almost 700,000, still do
“institutional maintenance” work like Hazen’s. They mop cellblock floors, prepare and
serve food in the dining hall, mow the lawns, file papers in the warden’s office, and
launder millions of tons of uniforms and bed linens. Compensation varies from state
to state and facility to facility, but the median wage in state and federal prisons is 20
and 31 cents an hour, respectively.
Because inmate workers are not considered “employees” under the law, they have
none of the protections that word implies. No disability or worker’s compensation in
the event of an injury. No Social Security withholdings, sick time, or overtime pay. In
three states—Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas—they work for free. In Texas, where
inmates are required to work under threat of punishment, most do maintenance tasks
like Hazen, but some are assigned to “field force” jobs designed to be particularly
demeaning. “It wouldn’t be an ideal job,” says Jason Clark, Texas Department of
Criminal Justice public information officer director. “Someone may have had
disciplinary issues, so they end up in the field force, doing various things including
clearing fence lines. They’re out under armed-guard supervision, using their labor.”
If that scenario sounds familiar, it should. “Thousands of prisoners toil in the hot sun
every day and make nothing,” says Judith Greene, a researcher and advocate with the
nonprofit group Justice Strategies. “Prison guards on horseback, ten-gallon hats,
prisoners in their uniforms. It looks like what it is: plantation labor all over again.”
5. How is the situation of today’s prisoners similar to the Black Codes of Mississippi in 1865?
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Exit Ticket
What is the most important thing you learned today?
What questions do you still have that were not answered?
(MINIMUM 2)