The Black Codes
1865-1866
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Designed to replace the social controls of slavery that had been removed by the
Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution
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Intended to assure continuance of white supremacy.
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Intended to secure a steady supply of cheap labor, and all continued to assume the
inferiority of the freed slaves.
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Apprentice laws provided for the "hiring out" of orphans and other young dependents to
whites, which often turned out to be their former owners.
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Some states limited the type of property blacks could own, and in others blacks were
excluded from certain businesses or from the skilled trades.
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Differed by state:
The color line was firmly drawn, and any amount of Negro blood established the race of
a person, whether slave or free, as Negro.
The status of the offspring followed that of the mother, so that the child of a free father
and a slave mother was a slave.
Slaves had few legal rights:
In court their testimony was inadmissible in any litigation involving whites;
Could make no contract, nor could they own property
Even if attacked, they could not strike a white person.
Restrictions to enforce social control:
Could not be away from their owner's premises without permission;
Vagrancy laws declared a black to be vagrant if unemployed and without permanent
residence
Could not assemble unless a white person was present; could not own firearms;
Could not be taught to read or write, or transmit or possess "inflammatory" literature;
they were not permitted to marry.
Such punishments as whipping, branding, and imprisonment were commonly used, but
death (which meant destruction of property) was rarely called for except in such extreme
cases as the rape or murder of a white person.
The Rise of Jim Crow
Jim Crow was not a person, yet affected the lives of millions of people. Named after a popular 19thcentury minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans, "Jim Crow" came to personify the system
of government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation in the United State
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Redeemer Democrats systematically exclude black voters
Jim Crow laws legalize segregation and restrict black civil rights
By 1910 the process was complete
The North and the federal government did little or nothing to prevent it
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Lynching—187 blacks lynched yearly 1889-1899
U.S. Supreme Court decisions gut Reconstruction Amendments 1875-1896
―Reunion‖ accomplished as North tacitly acquiesces in Southern discrimination
Supreme Court Rulings:
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Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)--court rules that 14th Amendment does not protect the civil
rights that individuals got from being citizens of a state (only those that come from being
citizens of the U.S.)--Guts the amendment
U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876)--14th amendment only protects against abuses by the state, not
against abuses by individuals (even if working for the state)--involved the murder of 30
black militiamen by whites
Court in 1883 strikes down the Enforcement Acts and the Civil Rights Act of 1875
Plessy V. Ferguson (1896)-- enacts legality of segregation – schools transportation hotels,
public venues