BLACK CODES
A body of laws, statutes, and rules enacted by
southern states immediately after the Civil War to
regain control over the freed slaves, maintain
white supremacy, and ensure the continued supply
of cheap labor.
The Union’s victory over the South in the
Civil War signaled the end for the institution of
SLAVERY in the United States. Ratified in 1865,
the THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT to the U.S. Con-
stitution formalized this result in U.S. law, abol-
ishing slavery throughout the country and every
territory subject to its jurisdiction.
For the next several months, southern states
sought a way to restore for the white majority
what the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amend-
ment had tried to deny them, supremacy, con-
trol, and economic power over the fate of
African Americans. Under slavery, whites had
disciplined the blacks largely outside the law,
through extralegal whippings administered by
slave owners and their overseers. After the slaves
were emancipated, panicky whites feared that
blacks would seek revenge against them for
their harsh and inhumane treatment on the
southern plantations. Former slave owners
feared for themselves, their families, and their
property.
While some white southerners thought that
African-Americans were best controlled
through VIGILANTISM,Mississippi whites began
passing laws to take away the former slaves’ new
found freedom. The first such law was enacted
on November 22, 1865. It directed civil officers
to hire orphaned African Americans and for-
bade the orphans to leave their place of employ-
ment for any reason. Orphans were typically
compensated with a free place to live, free meals,
and some type of nominal wage. Other white
employers were prohibited from offering any
enticement to blacks “employed†by someone
else.
The Mississippi legislature next passed a
VAGRANCY law, defining vagrants as workers
who “neglected their calling or employment or
misspent what they earned.†Another Missis-
sippi law required African Americans to carry
with them written evidence of their present
employment at all times, a practice that was
hauntingly reminiscent of the old pass system
under slavery. The final piece to the puzzle came
when Mississippi established a system of special
county courts to punish blacks charged with
violating one of the new state employment laws.
The law imposed draconian punishments,
including “corporal chastisement†for blacks
who refused to work or otherwise tried to frus-
trate the system. African Americans who com-
mitted real crimes, such as stealing, could be
hung by their thumbs.
Widely considered to be the first set of Black
Codes passed in the south after the Civil War,
these Mississippi laws represented a concerted
effort by white lawmakers to restore the master-
slave relationship under a new name. Within a
few months after Mississippi passed its first such
law, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Ten-
nessee, Virginia, and North Carolina followed
suit by enacting similar laws of their own.
Congress quickly responded to the Black
Codes by passing the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT of 1866,
which made it illegal to discriminate against
blacks by assigning them an inferior legal and
economic status. Two years later the states rati-
fied the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, which guaranteed “equal protection of the laws” to the residents of every state.
But the southern states were not deterred.
They soon passed a new set of laws that permit-
ted local officials to informally discriminate
against blacks, without specific statutory
authority. The thrust-and-parry exchanges
between Congress and the southern states con-
tinued throughout the period Reconstruction
(1865-77) and through the first half of the twentieth
century.
FURTHER READINGS
Kramer, William. 1984. “How ‘Black Codes’ Virtually Nullified
the Emancipation Proclamation.” The Los Angeles
Daily Journal 97.
Pulliam, Ted. 2001. “The Dark Days of Black Codes.” Legal
Times 24.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Civil Rights Acts; Civil Rights Cases; Civil Rights Movement;
Corporal Punishment; Fourteenth Amendment; Jim
Crow Laws; Reconstruction; Segregation; Thirteenth
Amendment.
