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research essay on black codes
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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.
After the Civil War, in 1865, the southern plantation owners were left with minimal labor. They were bitter over the outcome of the war and wanted to keep African Americans under their control. Black Codes were unique to the southern states, and each state had their own variation of them. In general, the codes compelled the freedmen to work. Any unemployed black could be arrested and charged with vagrancy. The ones that did work had hours, duties, and types of jobs dictated to them. Codes were also developed to restrict blacks from becoming successful. They discouraged owning and selling property, and raising and selling their own crops. Blacks were often prohibited from entering town without written permission from a white employer. A black found after 10 p.m. without a note could be arrested. Permission was even required from a black’s employer to live in a town! Section 5 of the Mississippi Black Codes states that every second January, blacks must show proof of residence and employment. If they live in town, a note from the mayor must b...
The Mississippi Black Codes document of 1865 was presented to us by Walter L. Fleming, who was a historian who dealt with the south and more specifically the reconstruction era. He was targeting future historians who were studying this era. He nearly states the pros and cons of what the Mississippi Black Codes asked of their citizens. There were several things in the document that interested me in what history was at this time period. On the other hand, there were parts of the amendments to the government which I found very unethical with my present-day mindset. I realize such times were different, but it still made me sick to my stomach that “Freedmen, Free Negroes, and Mulattoes” were treated very differently than the ways such as whites were treated. The author breaks down the documents into different sections of the reconstruction plan. At first, he starts out talking about vagrant laws, which stated that the newly emancipated citizens had special laws that pertained to them. They were treated like animals that were forced to work if they did not have ownership of property. If they couldn’t hold down a job, on the second
The Black Codes were legal statutes and constitutional amendments enacted by the ex Confederate states following the Civil War that sought to restrict the liberties of newly free slaves, to ensure a supply of inexpensive agricultural labor, and maintain a white dominated hierachy. (paragraph 1) In southern states, prior to the Civil War they enacted Slave Codes to regulate the institution of slavery. And northern non-slave holding states enacted laws to limit the black political power and social mobility. (paragraph 2) Black Codes were adopted after the Civil War and borrowed points from the antebellum slave laws as well as laws in the northern states used to regulate free blacks. (paragraph 3) Eventually, the Black Codes were extinguished when Radical Republican Reconstruction efforts began in 1866-67 along with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights legislation. The lives of the Black Codes did not have longevity but were significant. (paragraph 3)
The Black Codes were very controversial in the North and in the South they were accepted and prominent. One reason why they were so controversial in the North was because they would try to persuade many African Americans to quit their jobs before their contracts would expire. In certain states where there were more African Americans than whites such as, Mississippi or South Carolina the Black Codes were harsher than in any other states. For example, in Mississippi a rule that if anyone without any type of job before January 1 of 1866 would be arrested if they could not pay a fee of 50 dollars. Many Congress members during Johnson’s time if office disliked his plan for Reconstruction in the South because it seemed like it was to “restore defeated and discredited Confederates to power in the South” (209).
Though the issue of slavery was solved, racism continues and Southerners that stayed after the war passed Black Codes which subverted the ideas of freedom including the actions of state legislatures (Hakim 19). Black Codes were a set of laws that discriminated blacks and limited their freedom (Jordan 388). Such restrictions included: “No negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said parish...No public meetings or congregations of negroes shall be allowed within said parish after sunset…” (Louisiana Black Codes 1865). A solution to this was the 14th Amendment. It meant now all people born in America were citizens and it “Prohibited states from revoking one’s life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” This meant all states had to...
When slavery was abolished in the Thirteenth Amendment, Southerners used black codes to retain control over blacks. These state laws varied in strictness and detail from state to state; they abased the status of the freedmen by regulating their activities and treating them as social and civil inferiors. Generally black codes were not beneficial, because the supposedly freedmen were treated little more than slaves.
After the Civil War, white southerners had to figure out ways to continue feeling superior to their former slaves. Anxious to regain power over former slaves, southerners created the Black Codes of 1865. These codes were different from state to state, but most held similar restrictions. If blacks were unemployed, they could be arrested and charged with vagrancy. White Southerners believed blacks were to only work as agricultural laborers so the laws also restricted their hours of labor, duties, and behavior. Additionally, the codes prevented the raising of their own crops by black people. They were prohibited from ent...
The white southern government passed restrictive black codes, which was mostly just revised sections of the slave codes and replaced the word slaves with freedmen. The codes made former slaves carry passes, observe curfews, and live in housing provided by landowners. There were certain jobs that blacks still could not get into. Labor contracts even bounded the freed people to plantations and laws would punish anyone who tried to lure workers away from the plantations to other employment opportunities.
The southern governments enacted a series of Black Codes that were purposefully meant to keep blacks “as near to a state of bondage as possible.” Blacks could not bear arms, be employed in occupations other than farming and domestic service, or leave their jobs without forfeiting back pay. The Mississippi code required them to sign labor contracts for the year in January and, in addition, drunkards, vagrants, beggars, “common nightwalkers,” and even “mischief makers” and persons who “misspend what they earn” and who could not pay the stiff fines assessed for such misbehavior were to be “hired out…at public outcry” to the white persons who would take them for the shortest period in return for paying the fines. Such laws, apparently designed to get around the Thirteenth Amendment, outraged Northerners.”
Black codes were state, or county laws used in what was known as the solid south as a way to keep the newly freed slaves from having real freedom. Most of these laws were completely ridiculous, and violations of these laws would lead to jail. An example of a black code was that black people were not permitted to be out at night past a certain time however white people were not bound to these rules, and regulations. Many people would unintentionally break these rules since many African Americans at the time were traveling from county to county to find work they were often not aware of the laws of the county they were in. Since farmers had lost free workers after the civil war most people who violated black codes, instead of going to jail would have to work on farms, or get involved with chain
The Black codes were the predecessor too, and served as a blueprint for, the Jim Crow Laws. With the emancipation recently freeing thousands of slaves from bondage, whites Americans were now worried about what they would do about the enormous loss of manpower. Having no previous work experience, men and women didn’t know how to function without the slaves and servants they had become so accustomed to. (Wormser) Men were particularly worried about the loss of manpower in their fields. (Wormser) With cotton still the driving crop of the South, farmers needed hundreds of able-bodied men to be able to harvest enough cotton to meet the rising demands. In the home, women were terrified of losing their house slaves. Having no previous experience living home without servants or maids, wives and mothers did not know how to cook, clean, or even take care of their children. (Wormser) To combat this, the Black Codes were enacted to make sure that, regardless of their recent emancipation, African Americans were never really free (fofweb.com). The "… codes were based on an assumption that freedmen were immature and unable to make d...
South Carolina’s slave codes were based off of the English slave codes of 1688 that were employed in Barbados. South Carolina’s slave codes where the baseline for slave patrols, giving them the rights to beat, abuse and even kill slaves thought to be in violation of their codes, as well as giving slave owners totality of their slaves. It should be noted there were slave codes for Northern states as well (Christian, 1998), however, they were less severe toward escaped slaves, though they still followed many of the same provisions as their Southern codes i.e. forbidding of slaves leaving their owner’s land without proper authority from their owner, or whites and the trade of alcohol to slaves, and a explanation on the proper punishment to be handed down for escape by
The laws known as “Jim Crow” were laws presented to basically establish racial apartheid in the United States. These laws were more than in effect for “for three centuries of a century beginning in the 1800s” according to a Jim Crow Law article on PBS. Many try to say these laws didn’t have that big of an effect on African American lives but in affected almost everything in their daily life from segregation of things: such as schools, parks, restrooms, libraries, bus seatings, and also restaurants. The government got away with this because of the legal theory “separate but equal” but none of the blacks establishments were to the same standards of the whites. Signs that read “Whites Only” and “Colored” were seen at places all arounds cities.
Black Codes was a name given to laws passed by southern governments established during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. These laws imposed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations.
After the civil war, newly freed slaves faced many challenges. Whites, especially in the south, regarded blacks as inferior more than ever before. The black codes were just one obstacle the freed slaves had to overcome. They were laws that were passed in the southern states that had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans freedom. These laws made it possible for the south to regain control over the black population in much of the same ways they had before. The black codes effected reconstruction, and even today’s society in many ways.
Black codes were adopted by midwestern states to regulate or inhibit the migration of free African-Americans to the midwest. Cruel and severe black code laws were adopted by southern states after the Civil War to control or reimpose the old social structure. Southern legislatures passed laws that restricted the civil rights of the emancipated former slaves. Mississippi was the first state to institute laws that abolished the full civil rights of African-Americans. "An Act to Confer Civil Rights on Freedmen, and for Other Purposes," a very misleading title, was passed in 1865. Other states quickly adopted their own versions of the codes, some of which were so restrictive that they resembled the old system of slavery such as forced labor for various offenses.