On April 9 , 1865 , the long and bloody American Civil War at long last come to an terminal . It had already been two geezerhood since PresidentAbraham Lincolnissued hisEmancipation Proclamation , but after the Confederacy ’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse , word slowly spread among the more than 4 million enslave Black men , women and child that they were truly and officially free .
White woodlet possessor , however — in league with Southern lawmakers and Northern corporations — had other idea . Starting with Mississippi and South Carolina , all - white state of matter legislature passed a serial of law prognosticate the Black Codes purpose on re - enslaving African Americans by fundamentally criminalizing Blackness .
" [ White Southerners ] have a clear good sense of how they desire to reconstitute their order after the Civil War and they ’re going to make certain that they do that through these sound and surplus - legal way , " saysT. Dionne Bailey , a chronicle professor at Colgate University who specializes in African American women ’s history and mass immurement .
Slavery By Another Name
The Black Codes enacted in late 1865 and former 1866 were excogitate to keep liberate Southern Blacks legally restrain to snowy plantation . The greatest veneration of southerly cotton growers and their Northern fabrication married person was that with the end of slavery they would fall behind access to the cheap ( or gratis ) and copious labour that had made cotton plant a cash crop .
With genuine emancipation , newly discharge mordant man and women could strike out on their own , farming their own land or ply a business deal as a skilled artisan . But where would that leave the large plantations , which swear on Black bodies to till their subject field and pluck their cotton ? If slavery was illegal , there needed to be another room to keep Black people subservient and indebted to the white planters .
The answer was to pass laws like the Black Codes that criminalize any attempt by Black men and women to erupt devoid from servitude . The effect was what journalist Douglas Blackmon called"Slavery By Another Name " , the title of respect of his 2008 Good Book — namely the widespread practice of devoid Black men and women unjustly jug , and then auction off off to grove and corporations to work off their " fines . "
The Black-only Crime of ‘Vagrancy’
Vagrancy laws were common in the nineteenth - century , giving local sheriffs the confidence to arrest " vagabond " who were unemployed , give ear out on the street and potentially reckon for worry . But the Black Codes in states like Mississippi and South Carolina create a whole new category of vagrancy that only hold to pitch-dark people .
" After the Civil War , the South was put down , " say Bailey . " There was no infrastructure left . You have poor Edward Douglas White Jr. and new freed Blacks , and a lot of people did n’t have jobs . But these vagrancy laws specifically attacked African Americans . "
grant to the Black Codes , any fatal person without a work declaration from a white-hot plantation owner could be apprehend for vagrancy . That think that no Black person could farm for themselves or work independently as a blacksmith or carpenter . They had to crop for a white plantation owner — often the very same somebody who formerly enslaved them — or go to jail .
Poor Southern T. H. White , on the other hand , could do whatever they pleased . They could work or not work and they would never be charged with vagrancy .
A Black somebody arrested for vagrancy under the Black Codes would then enroll a cycle of force labour from which there was little hope of escape . First , they would be make with a okay so exorbitant that they ’d never be able to pay it . To pay off the debt , they would then be auctioned off ( literally sold ) to a planter who would compensate the " drifting ’s " pay directly to the state . Once a Black person was convicted of vagrancy , there was no motivator for former striver masters to ever place them free .
" Your labor is cost almost nothing , " says Bailey . " They do n’t have to clothe you , they only have to feed you enough to keep you animated . And there ’s this gumption that even if one vagabond die , you could get another . Under this guise of vagrancy , they get laid it was an inexhaustible source of fatal body . "
The 13th Amendment Loophole
The U.S. Congress slip by the 13th Amendment formally get rid of slavery in January 1865 , before the end of the Civil War . But the amendment curb a gaping loophole that the Black Codes were ready to exploit . The 13th Amendment states ( italics tot ):
thraldom was abolishedexceptwhen it was a penalisation for a criminal offence , which is why the Black Codes made " Black vagrancy " a crime . And why young Black children would be forcibly removed from their parents under the guise of " neglectfulness " and then " apprentice " to a white planter for no pay .
" This was a legal system set up to not only mimic slavery , but to re - enslave all these fresh free valet , women and child , " says Bailey . " And it in effect did . "
ten-spot of thousands of African Americans were let by the state to planter , miners , corporation and others to pay off these debts , the Washington Post reported .
Formerly enslaved mordant men and women were afford some young right under the Black Codes . They could own kingdom and property , they could legally wed ( only other Black the great unwashed , of course ) and they could sue and testify in lawcourt ( but not against whites ) .
But those rights were simply windowpane dressing on laws that were expressly designed to strip freed Blacks of any real freedom , particularly the freedom to bring for themselves and pull in a living wage .
" [ Southern lawmaker ] seek to conceal this under the guise of , ' Well , you do have some right . you may wed , you may bear witness in court of law , ' but only if it was a person of their raceway , " says Bailey . " [ A shameful mortal ] could never take recourse against a person they work for who was taking reward of them or who did n’t pay them . "
The Shameful Legacy of the Black Codes
The Black Codes were abruptly - subsist . The U.S. Congress , frustrated with attempts by southerly lawmakers to sidestep Reconstruction , glide by theCivil Rights Act of 1866 , which aver that Black Americans must be afford the same civil rights savor by white citizenry .
In the wake of the Civil Rights Act , the Union administration imposed what ’s known as " Radical Reconstruction " on the former Confederate United States Department of State . During this fourth dimension , Black valet were given the right hand to vote and lead for political office , and thousands of public school opened across the South to do Black children .
The Black Codes may have been negate , but their bequest would echo down through racist post - Reconstruction laws and the indignities ofJim Crowlaws that were enacted in the South in the nineties and last all the style to thecivil rights motion of the fifties and 60s .
" The Black Codes laid the framework for how this whole organisation is expire to work for the next 100 long time , " say Bailey . Jim Crow law made it illegal for Blacks and whites to share any public facilities , meaning that both group had freestanding schools , libraries , hospitals , eatery , etc . with Blacks receiving inferior quickness to White . Laws were act out requiring literacy tests and/or pollard taxes to be pay up before ballot , all contrive to disenfranchise poor African Americans .
In " Slavery by Another Name , " Blackmonwroteabout a Black adult male key out Green Cottenham who was arrested in 1908 in Alabama for " vagrancy , " the same trumped - up charge invent 40 twelvemonth earlier by the Black Codes . Cottenham was auctioned off to the northerly pot U.S. Steel , who chained him in a suffocating Birmingham , Alabama , ember mine and tasked him with excavation 8 tons ( 7.25 metrical tons ) of coal a day until his fine was repaid . If he fall in from malnourishment or weariness , he would be whipped . And if he kick the bucket , he ’d be buried in a shallow , unnoted grave with the relaxation . More than 1,000 Black man were toil for U.S. Steel along with Cottenham in the same mine . In less than year , 60 were dead from disease , accidents or homicide .
Blackmon called this shameful chapter of American history " neo - thraldom " and it was all set in motion by the Black Codes .
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