Freedom on My Mind: The Black Codes

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In the book “Freedom on My Mind” it states, “the legal status of blacks in early Virginia remains controversial because laws regulating slavery do not appear in the colony’s legal statutes prior to the 1600s.” Since laws regulating slavery did not appear, English colonists were able to create codes which determined who could be a slave. I will go into detail about these codes and how it made an impact on the development of black history. This will also answer the legal status of people of African descent in colonial Virginia and how blacks where distinguished from other Virginians.
After the English colonial developed the codes, as know as the “black codes” it enabled who would become be slaves. Virginia was the first to set it in motion because they believed that Africans had never received equal justice in the pass. With this piece of information remaining unknown, the codes included plenty of regulations most were rather brutal. The codes that were developed by the English colonists included: “If any Christian sleeps with a Negro man or woman, they would have to pay double fines; if any slave disobey or tries to correct their master there punishment could result in death and if any slaves destroy any cash crop they will be poisoned and will suffer death as a felon.” (White, D.) These few codes including many others were passed in the early eighteen hundreds. After this took place is when the slave masters were able to treat slaves however they wanted because they had unlimited powers to how they could discipline them. In my opinion, because the slaves are the ones who are bringing in the money and doing all the labor they should be able to have limited discipline. Since the codes were developed, blacks obviously didn’t have a...

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...e. If a white person saw a free slave and wanted them to become a slave again I’m sure that could happen easily and because it was so easy this shows how backs were distinguished from Virginians and that there legal status pretty much say that they will never be one hundred percent free from being a slave.

Works Cited

White, Deborah G, Mia Bay, and Waldo E. Martin. Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print. 19 Feb. 2014.

Joyce Tang Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 27, No. 5 (May, 1997), pp. 598-614
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. 19 Feb. 2014.

Gary Hart OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 17, No. 3, Colonial Slavery (Apr., 2003), pp. 35-36 Published by: Organization of American Historians 19 Feb. 2014.

Peshkoff, Alex. Lecture Notes. Cosumnes River College, Sacramento. 19 Feb. 2014. Lecture.

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