The Black codes in the United States were any of numerous laws enacted in the states of the former Confederacy after the American Civil War, in 1865 and 1866; the laws were designed to replace the social controls of slavery that had been removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and were thus intended to assure continuance of white supremacy.
The black codes had their roots in the slave codes that had formerly been in effect. The general philosophy supporting the institution of chattel slavery in America was based on the concept that slaves were property, not persons, and that the law must protect not only the property but also the property owner from the danger of violence. In the British possessions in the New World, the settlers were free to promulgate any regulations they saw fit to govern their labor supply. As early as the 17th century, a set of rules was in effect in Virginia and elsewhere; but the codes were constantly being altered to adapt to new needs, and they varied from one colony, and later one state, to another.
All the slave codes - which later became knows as the Black Codes however, had certain provisions in common. In all of them the color line was firmly drawn, and any amount of Negro blood established the race of a person, whether slave or free, as Negro. The status of the offspring followed that of the mother, so that the child of a free father and a slave mother was a slave. Slaves had few legal rights: in court their testimony was inadmissible in any litigation involving whites; they could make no contract, nor could they own property; even if attacked, they could not strike a white person. There were numerous restrictions to enforce social control: slaves could not be away from their owner's premises without permission; they could not assemble unless a white person was present; they could not own firearms; they could not be taught to read or write, or transmit or possess "inflammatory" literature; they were not permitted to marry. In some instances legal marriage between blacks was provided for, but interracial marriage was strictly prohibited.
The black codes enacted immediately after the American Civil War, though varying from state to state, were all intended to secure a steady supply of cheap labor, and all continued to assume the inferiority of the freed slaves. There were vagrancy laws that declared a black to be vagrant if unemployed and without permanent residence; a person so defined could be arrested, fined, and bound out for a term of labor if unable to pay the fine. Apprentice laws provided for the "hiring out" of orphans and other young dependents to whites, which often turned out to be their former owners.
It was Northern reaction to the black codes that helped produce Radical Reconstruction, The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. Reconstruction did away with the black codes, but, after Reconstruction was over, many of their provisions were reenacted in the form of Jim Crow laws, which were not finally done away with until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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