Black codes of 1865

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Black codes of 1865

• c. Howell
• 10-13-04

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Black codes of 1865

• Black Codes was a name given to laws passed by
  southern governments established during the
  presidency of Andrew Johnson. These laws imposed
  severe restrictions on freed slaves such as
  prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them
  to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify
  against white men, carrying weapons in public
  places and working in certain occupations.
  After the American Civil War the Radical
  Republicans advocated the passing of the Civil
  Rights Bill, legislation that was designed to
  protect freed slaves from Southern Black Codes
  (laws that placed severe restrictions on freed
  slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote,
  forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their
  right to testify against white men, carrying
  weapons in public places and working in certain
  occupations).

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Black codes of 1865

• In April 1866, President Andrew Johnson vetoed
  the Civil Rights Bill. Johnson told Thomas C.
  Fletcher, the governor of Missouri "This is a
  country for white men, and by God, as long as I
  am President, it shall be a government for white
  men." His views on racial equality was clearly
  defined in a letter to Benjamin B. French, the
  commissioner of public buildings "Everyone
  would, and must admit, that the white race was
  superior to the black, and that while we ought to
  do our best to bring them up to our present
  level, that, in doing so, we should, at the same
  time raise our own intellectual status so that
  the relative position of the two races would be
  the same."Radical Republicans replaced the
  Civil Rights Bill and were also able to get the
  Reconstruction Acts passed in 1867 and 1868.
  Despite these acts, white control over Southern
  state governments was gradually restored when
  organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan were able
  to frighten blacks from voting in elections.

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Black codes of 1865

• 1. Black Codes
• convict labor, vagrancy, must have home and means
  of support
• in Miss, blacks forbidden to rent or own land
  outside towns
• in SC, black children could be apprenticed to
  whites if parents did not educe
• pt. keep blacks in slavery - insure labor
  supply restore press race relations
• enforced by southern "county militia" and helped
  by Union troops, e.g., Gen George Crook in N Car
  - feared Emanc Day riot Jan 1, 1866 gave arms
  to co. militia - gun battles, looting,
  "reallocation" of livestock acquired by freedmen
  during war

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Black codes of 1865

• The Black Codes of 1865 turned out to be a unique
  way for white southerners to attempt to maintain
  the way of life they had known prior to the Civil
  War. While freedom had been won, ex-slaves were
  restricted and opportunities were limited.

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Black codes of 1865

• The Black Codes were instituted by Southern
  legislative bodies in 1865 and 1866 in response
  to the emancipation of the four million former
  slaves in the Southern states during and after
  the American Civil War (1861-1865). The Black
  Codes recognized the new status of African
  Americans as freed people and offered them some
  of the basic rights of citizenship. However, the
  codes also defined the freed people as legally
  subordinate to whites and attempted to manage
  their labor in a way that would cause minimal
  disruption to the labor system instituted under
  slavery.

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Black codes of 1865

• Faced with a rapidly transformed political and
  economic structure in the postbellum South,
  Mississippi and South Carolina began passing laws
  in 1865 to limit the freedom of African
  Americans. New vagrancy laws placed blacks in
  jeopardy of imprisonment or forced labor if they
  could not prove they were employed or
  self-supporting. Often the result was that free
  men and women returned to work for their former
  slave owners or on nearby plantations. The
  termination of a contract was made illegal for
  "any freedman, free Negro, or mulatto." In order
  to restrict the movement and resettlement of
  former slaves, laws forbade blacks to own or rent
  farmland. The codes did allow the freed people a
  number of basic legal rights that had not been
  granted under slavery. The rights to marry each
  other, to sue, to own minimal property, and to
  enter into contracts were written in the codes.
  Still, the central purpose of the Black Codes was
  the maintenance of a white-dominated hierarchy
  after the Civil War.

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Black codes of 1865

• The ends