After the Civil War, the Union made numerous efforts to grant rights to the freed slaves. In a period known as Reconstruction, leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and radical republicans took different approaches to this idea of recuperation. However, even after the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th amendment, and the 15th amendment, Southern white supremacists found a way to circumvent these laws through their own set of restrictive laws known as the Black Codes.
The Black Codes were designed to limit the freedoms of former African American slaves as well as give the Southern whites cheap labor now that slavery was abolished. In 1865, the first set of Black Codes were enforced by states Mississippi and South Carolina. In Mississippi, the laws required all Blacks to sign labor contracts and if they were broken, they would be subject to forfeited wages and arrest. In South Carolina, Blacks were prohibited from holding any occupation higher than servants or farmers unless they paid a tax that could be as high as $100. These laws soon spread to other parts of the south, despite backlash from the abolitionist North. Ultimately, the Black Codes were a way for the Southern whites to maintain their political dominance over the emancipated African Americans.:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/BlackCodes-5c6aeaf9c9e77c00013b3c06.jpg)
By the 1890s, the South’s Black Codes had evolved into a set of laws called the Jim Crow laws, also to further discriminate against African Americans. Named after Thomas Rice, an actor who painted his face black in a play, Jim Crow laws were more focused on racial segregation in the public sphere of former Confederate States. These laws segregated Blacks and Whites in professional offices, water fountains, restrooms, entrances, elevators, as well as amusement park registers. Furthermore, these laws prohibited Blacks from living in white neighborhoods, hospitals, and jails.
Even though the Jim Crow laws came after the Black codes, both set out to fulfill one common goal: Suppress and discriminate against Blacks and maintain the political power of whites. Although the Jim Crow Laws were abolished in 1964, we still see the effects of racism and white supremacy today.
Sources:
I really liked how you showed the evolution of black codes over time and how they tried to evade controversy even though they were thought to be unconstitutional. I thought showing how they became Jim Crow Laws and the effects those laws had on African Americans really showed the severity of the issue. This post really helped to show that this concept was not an isolated event in history but it spanned across many years.
ReplyDelete