Black Codes (United States)
1
Black Codes (United States)
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The Black Codes were laws in the United States after the Civil War with the effect of limiting the civil rights and
civil liberties of blacks. Even though the U.S. constitution originally discriminated against blacks and both Northern
and Southern states had passed discriminatory legislation from the early 19th century, the term Black Codes is used
most often to refer to legislation passed by Southern states at the end of the Civil War to control the labor, migration
and other activities of newly-freed slaves.
In Texas, these codes were enacted in 1866, right after the Civil War. The legislation reaffirmed the inferior position
that slaves and free blacks had held in antebellum Texas and was intended to regulate black labor. The codes
reflected the unwillingness of white Texans to accept blacks as equals and also their fears that freedmen would not
work unless coerced. Thus the codes continued legal discrimination between whites and blacks. The legislature,
when it amended the 1856 penal code, emphasized the continuing line between whites and blacks by defining all
individuals with one-eighth or more black ancestry as persons of color, subject to special provisions in the law.[1]
Black Codes (United States)
Though varying from state to state, they each endeavored to secure a steady supply of cheap labor, and continued to
assume the inferiority of the freed slaves. The black codes had their roots in the slave codes that had formerly been
in effect. The premise behind chattel slavery in America was that slaves were property, and, as such, they had few, if
any, legal rights. The slave codes, in their many loosely-defined forms, were seen as effective tools against slave
unrest, particularly as a hedge against uprisings and runaways. Enforcement of slave codes also varied, but corporal
punishment was widely and harshly employed to great effect.[2]
Expansion: 1830–1860
As the abolitionist movement gained force and escape programs for slaves such as the Underground Railroad
expanded, concern about blacks heightened among some whites in the North. Article 13 of Indiana's 1851
Constitution stated "No Negro or Mulatto shall come into, or settle in, the State, after the adoption of this
Constitution." The 1848 Constitution of Illinois led to one of the harshest Black Code systems in the nation until the
Civil War. The Illinois Black Code of 1853 extended a complete prohibition against black immigration into the state.
All the slave states passed laws banning the marriage of whites and negros, so-called anti-miscegenation laws, as did
several new free states, including Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.[3] Indiana and Illinois shared borders with slave
states and the southern populations of these states had cultures that shared more values with the South across the
Ohio River than the northern populations. In several states the Black Codes were either incorporated into or required
by their state constitutions, many of which were rewritten in the 1840s.
Post-Civil War
After the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, all former slave states
adopted new Black Codes. During 1865 every Southern state passed Black Codes that restricted the Freedmen, who
were emancipated but not yet full citizens. While they pursued re-admission to the Union, the Southern states
provided freedmen with limited second-class civil rights and no voting rights. Southern plantation owners feared that
they would lose their land. Having convinced themselves that slavery was justified, planters feared African
Americans wouldn't work without coercion. The Black Codes were an attempt to control them and to ensure they did
not claim social equality.
The Black Codes granted African Americans certain rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and
limited access to the courts. But the Black Codes denied them the rights to testify against whites, to serve on juries or
in state militias, or to vote, and express legal concern publicly. And, in response to planters’ demands that the 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. Some states limited the occupations open to African
Americans and barred them from acquiring land, and others provided that judges could assign African American
children to work for their former owners without the consent of their parents.[4]
These are detailed elements of the black codes of Mississippi and South Carolina:[5]
Mississippi:
"Negroes must make annual contracts for their labor in writing; if they should run away from their tasks, they
forfeited their wages for the year. Whenever it was required of them they must present licenses (in a town
from the mayor; elsewhere from a member of the board of police of the beat) citing their places of residence
and authorizing them to work. Fugitives from labor were to be arrested and carried back to their employers.
Five dollars a head and mileage would be allowed such negro catchers. It was made a misdemeanor,
punishable with fine or imprisonment, to persuade a freedman to leave his employer, or to feed the runaway.
Minors were to be apprenticed, if males until they were twenty-one, if females until eighteen years of age.
Such corporal punishment as a father would administer to a child might be inflicted upon apprentices by their
masters. Vagrants were to be fined heavily, and if they could not pay the sum, they were to be hired out to
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Black Codes (United States)
service until the claim was satisfied. Negroes might not carry knives or firearms unless they were licensed so
to do. It was an offence, to be punished by a fine of $50 and imprisonment for thirty days, to give or sell
intoxicating liquors to a negro. When negroes could not pay the fines and costs after legal proceedings, they
were to be hired at public outcry by the sheriff to the lowest bidder...."
South Carolina:
"In South Carolina persons of color contracting for service were to be known as "servants," and those with
whom they contracted, as "masters." On farms the hours of labor would be from sunrise to sunset daily, except
on Sunday. The negroes were to get out of bed at dawn. Time lost would be deducted from their wages, as
would be the cost of food, nursing, etc., during absence from sickness. Absentees on Sunday must return to the
plantation by sunset. House servants were to be at call at all hours of the day and night on all days of the week.
They must be "especially civil and polite to their masters, their masters' families and guests," and they in
return would receive "gentle and kind treatment." Corporal and other punishment was to be administered only
upon order of the district judge or other civil magistrate. A vagrant law of some severity was enacted to keep
the negroes from roaming the roads and living the lives of beggars and thieves."
The Black Codes outraged public opinion in the North because it seemed the South was creating a form of
quasi-slavery to negate the results of the war. After winning large majorities in the 1866 elections, the Republicans
put the South under military rule. They held new elections in which the Freedmen could vote. Suffrage was also
expanded to poor whites. The new governments repealed all the Black Codes; The 14th Amendment's equal
protection clause ensured that the Black Codes could not reappear in southern legislation. It was adopted on July 9th,
1868.
Segregation
As one historian has noted, "Racial segregation was hardly a new phenomenon. Before the Civil War, when slavery
had fixed the status of most blacks, no need was felt for statutory measures segregating the races. The restrictive
Black Codes, along with the few segregation laws passed by the first postwar governments, did not survive
Reconstruction," Leon F. Litwack wrote [p. 229] in Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow, the
sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning history Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery.
Distinction from Jim Crow laws
The Black Codes of the 1860s are not the same as the Jim Crow laws. The Black Codes were in reaction to the
abolition of slavery and the South's defeat in the Civil War. Southern legislatures enacted them in the 1860s. The Jim
Crow era began later, nearer to the end of the 19th century after Reconstruction.
References
• Birnbaum, Jonathan and Taylor, Clarence, eds. (2000). Civil Rights Since 1787: A Reader on the Black Struggle,
New York University Press ISBN 0-8147-8215-9
• Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877 (Harpercollins: 1988) ISBN
0-06-015851-4
• Horton, James Oliver and Horton, Lois E. (1998). In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among
Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860
• Litwack, Leon F. (1998). Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow, Alfred A. Knopf
• Litwack, Leon F (1980). Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery Pulitzer Prize ISBN
0-394-74398-9
• Lowery,Charles D. and Marszalek, John F. (1992). Encyclopedia of African-American Civil Rights: From
Emancipation to the Present Greenwood Press
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Black Codes (United States)
• Middleton, Stephen (1993). The Black Laws in the Old Northwest : A Documentary History
• Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson (1917). A History of the United States since the Civil War, New York, Macmillan
Company
• Wilson, Theodore B. (1965). The Black Codes of the South University of Alabama Press
• Waldrep, Christopher (1996). "Substituting Law for the Lash: Emancipation and Legal Formalism in a
Mississippi County Court" Journal of American History 1996 82(4): 1425–1451. ISSN 0021-8723 Fulltext: in
Jstor. Actual operation of the codes in Mississippi courts.
Notes
[1] "The Handbook of Texas Online – BLACK CODES" (http:/ / www. tshaonline. org/ handbook/ online/ articles/ BB/ jsb1. html). . Retrieved
2010-01-19.
[2] "black code (United States History) – Britannica Encyclopedia Online" (http:/ / www. britannica. com/ EBchecked/ topic/ 67722/
black-code). . Retrieved 2010-01-19.
[3] "The Legal Map of Interracial Relations 1662–1967" (http:/ / www. lovingday. org/ legal-map). . Retrieved 2010-01-19.
[4] Foner, Eric "Give Me Liberty! An American History", volume one, second edition, page 535
[5] Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, A History of the United States since the Civil War (1917) 1:128–129
External links
• "An Act to Establish and Regulate the Domestic Relations of Persons of Color..." or the Black Codes of South
Carolina, December 1865 (http://www.teachingushistory.org/tTrove/scblackcodes.htm)
• 1865 Black Codes of Mississippi (http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/code.html) Text of laws
• Northern Black Codes – Were they effective? (http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/artpaper.pdf) by
William Arthur Carden
• The Illinois Black Code (http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/1996/iht329602.html) by Roger D. Bridges
• Black Codes in the Former Confederate States (http://www.civilwarhome.com/blackcodes.htm)
• The Black Codes of 1865 (http://afroamhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa121900a.htm)
• Texas State Historical Association: Black Codes (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/view/
BB/jsb1.html) by Carl H. Moneyhon
• Black codes and Jim Crow laws in South Carolina (http://www.sciway.net/afam/reconstruction/blackcodes.
html)
• The Reader's Companion to American History: Black Codes (http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/
rcah/html/ah_010000_blackcodes.htm)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica (via PBS): Black Codes (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/
black_code.html)
• Slavery by Another Name (http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/) by Doug A. Blackmon
• The Southern "Black Codes" of 1865-66 (http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-15-2-c.html)
Article, Discussion Questions, and Activity from Constitutional Rights Foundation
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