Black Codes: Slavery Under a New Name During Reconstruction
The Black Codes were a series of racist and discriminatory policies enacted by several former slave states in the United States during the early years of the Reconstruction Era (circa 1865-1877). Rooted in earlier vagrancy laws and slave codes, the Black Codes established a new form of quasi-slavery by restricting Black freedoms, denying Black people equal political rights, and resubjugating freed men and women to forced labor. Outrage over the Black Codes by Northerners and Radical Republicans helped trigger the 'Radical' phase of Reconstruction, leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Reconstruction Acts. However, the Black Codes, part of a larger legacy of White supremacy, did not end with Reconstruction but morphed into the Jim Crow laws of the segregationist South.
Background: Vagrancy Laws & Slave Codes
The Black Codes were rooted in a long legacy of racism, classism, and White supremacy. They relied heavily on earlier vagrancy laws, which restricted the freedom of movement of those deemed to be 'vagrants.' Vagrants were usually classified as impoverished people who made their living by begging, scavenging, or thieving; ostensibly to minimize these activities, authorities were permitted to arrest anyone they deemed to be a 'vagrant' out in public places or on the streets. These laws, first implemented in late medieval England, discouraged poor peasants and serfs from traveling, effectively guaranteeing a pool of labor to manorial lords, who could now rest assured that their workers would be less likely to leave. Later, these laws were weaponized to clamp down on homelessness as well as on those deemed to come from 'undesirable' classes.
The slave codes of colonial and Antebellum America would also help inform the later Black Codes. These laws codified the racial hierarchy and White supremacy that were necessary for chattel slavery to exist. They defined enslaved people as the property of their masters, rather than as human beings, and proclaimed that a child born to an enslaved mother would also be enslaved. Although slave codes varied from state to state, many forbade enslaved people from being educated and denied them any legal or civil rights. The codes also allowed masters to whip, brand, or imprison their slaves as punishment. In the decades running up to the American Civil War, much of the American South relied on slave labor to uphold its agrarian, plantation-based economy. However, the loss of the war and the end of slavery deprived the South of much of its workforce. It was this labor shortage – combined, of course, with the legacy of slavery and White supremacy, as well as a desire to avenge the defeat of the Confederacy – that would lead to the slave codes and vagrancy laws being wound together to create the Black Codes.
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⇒ Black Codes: Slavery Under a New Name During Reconstruction
