Shortly after the Civil War's end, Southern legislatures, which were dominated by ex-Confederates during the presidential phase of Reconstruction (1864–1867), passed laws that for former slaves replaced the authority of slave owners with that of the state. Republicans labeled these laws Black Codes. All acts bestowed at least some minimal civil rights, including the rights to sue and be sued, to testify in court (but not against whites), and to marry (at least each other). In no state were freedmen permitted to vote, hold office, or serve on juries. Northerners objected that the codes also placed severe restrictions on African-American hopes of economic and political advancement.
At the end of the Civil War, a large proportion of the Southern population had been relocated, but the freed people were not always welcomed or anxious to stay on the plantations where they had once worked. In addition, thousands took to the roads in search of lost family members. Finally, the freed people clung to the vain hope that the forty acres and a mule promised by General W. T. Sherman during his march to sea awaited them in the near future. Southern white legislators, faced with what they saw as social unrest and economic ruin, embedded in their codes significant restrictions on African-American economic freedom.
Laws requiring work were nothing new however, they were now directed at African Americans. In spite of this, not only did the Black Codes seek to reestablish white control over black labor, but many state and city ordinances effectively froze blacks out of skilled work, professions, and even land ownership.
Freedman's Bureau officials, Southern Unionists, and radical Republicans immediately objected to these laws. The result was the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After its central feature, that freed people were both American and state citizens, came the three key guarantees: the privileges and immunities of citizenship, equal protection of the law, and due process of law. The Black Codes became a dead letter in law.
However, large portions of these codes became part of the structure of Southern society after Reconstruction ended. Restrictions on the freedom to buy land or travel became sunset laws, large posted signs warning those of African-American ancestry that they were expected to be out of town before dark or face the threat of bodily harm. Numerous federal peonage prosecutions in the twentieth century revealed that the labor laws too had been revived. Finally, the segregation found its way back into law in the 1890s and endured until the 1970s. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was aimed at overturning segregation and the denial of equal rights, which were the legacy of slavery, Black Codes, and the failure after 1877 to apply the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to protect African-American civil liberties.
1. What would be the fate of some of the 4 million newly emancipated (Freed) slaves?
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2. What are some of the restrictions placed newly freedmen’s lives by the Black Codes?
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3. What piece of legislature(Laws) was passed that helped ease the tension that was created between the newly freed African Americans and the Southerners.
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