The Black Slave Codes, Jim Crow Laws, And Color Line

Slavery was not a word that was unknown in the United States of America; the word was at the tip of almost everyone’s tongue, only it came with many names. After the civil war, slavery became more pronounced for the black people. The south then thought something ought to be done and passed laws called the black codes which begun the limitation of blacks’ rights and separated them from the whites; white supremacy began. Before, these laws would have been unnecessary because most of the black people were slaves and they were already segregated in public places like schools and theatres. In 1866, Congress did not like this and they responded to these laws by putting a stop to it. Republicans had managed to begin reconstruction on the society and understand the black community. But in 1877 things took a turn for the worse when the Democratic parties recovered control and stopped the progress of reconstruction. This in turn caused the reverse of all the progress made in the past few years to understand the black community; they lost their rights to hold political seats, vote and generally participate as though they were members of the community. Slowly but surely, the south started to restore their racially unfair laws. The aim of the laws? To ensure segregation and alienation of the black community. One of the main powers taken away was the right to vote and they did this by imposing poll taxes, having expensive fees to be paid at the voting booths and

Even after the hurdle of being enslaved was passed, there were many more and difficult hurdles ahead. For example, the black codes were an earlier major hurdle. The codes prevented African Americans from owning weapons, votes, and land. While the Black Codes were quickly abolish; a group emerged called the Ku Klux Klan which aimed to bring down African Americans to be seen as less than then human. However, the Jim Crow laws caused separation, and that separation led to African Americans having unequal opportunities. These laws were claimed to be constitutional, because they didn't deprive any person of life, liberty, or property; or trying to include slavery. From the Black codes to Jim Crow laws, African Americans had, and have many hurdles to overcome.

As much as Reconstruction had initially tried to help the South, it was the sole goal of this movement to, “undo as much as possible of Reconstruction.” State facilities originally that were supposed to help everyone were closed down, and the gap between black and white expenditures on schooling increased. Due to the depression in the 1890’s this worsened the situation for black families trying to make a living in the South couldn’t keep up their farms or the places that their children would learn. “In 1900, no public high schools for blacks existed in the South. Black elementary schools, one observer reported, occupied buildings “as bad as stables””. New laws about segregation also affected blacks in more ways than just demoralization, it also showed what kind of jobs were considered good work for them. In the instance of segregation on railroads, “many blacks could be found in “whites only” railroad cars. But they entered as servants and nurses, not as paying customers entitled to equal treatment. The rise of lynching also affected the way blacks lived their lives, by controlling the way they vote, how they treated whites, and how they couldn’t rely on the justice system to address their grievances. An example of the reduced number of voters is best seen in Louisiana, where the number of voters dropped from 130, 000 to 1, 342, which is directly linked to the use of violence as a way to intimidate black voters. Blacks also had to be careful how they acted around white, since murder wasn’t a federal crime and was handled by the state, many blacks were lynched without fair trials and accused of crimes like raping white women, murder, and theft. A majority of the accused never when to trial. All in all blacks in the South were largely affected negatively as a result in policy changes, social factors, and widespread violence. This injustice carried on

With the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, millions of slaves were given their freedom. Although these millions of slaves are now free, the rebuilding on the South during the Reconstruction introduced many obstacles. These obstacles include sharecropping, tenant farming, the “black codes”, and not to forget the lack of education and rights African Americans had at the time. Sharecropping is consisted of a slave renting land from a white man and having to give up a portion of their crops at the end of each year. The black codes were basically laws against what type of labor African Americans can be given. In the state of South Carolina, blacks were only able to work as farmers or servants; the same jobs these free people worked as slaves. After decades of slavery, blacks were still under the control of the white people due to lack of education and rights.

Before there were players such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball was strictly white players only. The color line of Major League Baseball excluded black players until the late 40’s. This didn’t stop the colored men of America from playing the beloved American sport. The creation of the Negro Leagues in 1920 by Rube Foster gave colored men a chance to play in their own professional league, similar to the Major Leagues, but for African-American men. The creation of the Negro Leagues was a result of the Jim Crow Laws, state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period in the U.S., these laws continued in force until 1965. These laws created

Jim Crow laws dominated every aspect of African American life from its inception after Reconstruction up to the civil rights era and its affects can still be felt today. During this era of Jim Crow African Americans had different ways of coping with these oppressive laws. These ways of coping included these three methods, migration, agitation and accommodation. Out of these three methods the most effective at defying Jim Crow laws and fighting segregation was agitation.

The whole Jim Crow Law rules were based on the separate but equal properties. Any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the south between the end of reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Jim crow laws affected public places such as schools, housing jobs, parks, cemeteries, and public gathering places. Ohio was one of the first to ban interracial marriage. There was forms of segregation before the laws came into place. For instance some people had the mentality that they could work with a slave as long as the slave knew his or her place. Brown vs. Board of Education is an example of a Jim Crow law being put into action. After the supreme court unanimously held that racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause.

For my research topic I chose “Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws.” I chose this topic because I have heard about Jim Crow Laws many times through television, books, and history classes but never in depth. I wanted to know more about the topic, along with black codes, which I have never heard about and didn’t know existed. Choosing this topic allowed me to gain more knowledge on both of these topics. Before this paper, my knowledge of Jim Crows laws was that they were laws that White Southerners were using to keep former slaves as insubordinates to them. I learned that this is the basic idea and purpose of the Jim Crow laws, but they were also used to prevent complaints and issues, with the separate but equal laws, that said that black were to receive equal, but separate public facilities and buildings. What I wanted to know is how black codes differed from Jim Crow laws. To answer this question I found out the history behind them, the differences and the similarities, and in that, was able to grow as a researcher.

David W. Blight of Yale University said, “The nation needed to heal the sectional divide in order to function as one country.” Healing to African Americans meant trying to understand their role as a citizen, reuniting family members, and establishing their new freedoms as citizens. Many problems interfered with this process. Black codes, Redemption, and Jim Crow are all examples of initial offering and then revoking of freedoms toward African Americans throughout Reconstruction. African Americans did not lose without a fight though; some even maintained it. Blacks resisted their revocation of their freedom through the development of Alliances and Leagues, which helped them liberate themselves of black codes and white supremacy. African

Starting in the 1890s, segregation laws known as the Jim Crow Laws dominated the United States, specifically in the South. These laws required schools, parks, libraries, forms of public transportation and even drinking fountains to be segregated into “Whites Only” and “Coloreds”. Although the Jim Crow Laws intended to treat blacks “separate but equal”, blacks received poorer conditions in their public facilities, were denied the right to vote and were treated with no respect from the whites (Jim Crow Laws). In Richard Wright’s essay, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch”, Wright describes his first-hand experience with these laws and the negative encounters he has faced just because of the color of his skin.

Can you imagine being told where and what to do based on the color of your skin? Many people born between 1800s and 1900s have experienced this. Whites and Blacks were considered completely different species back in those days. People thought that the races being separated was okay, as long as everything each race had was equal. This was never the situation though because blacks always had less than what the white people did. A group of laws that enforced this behavior were known as the Jim Crow Laws.

Socially, African Americans were limited due to the Black Codes and the Jim Crow Laws.

From 1877 to the mid 1960s Jim Crow laws were in place. African Americans were viewed as second class citizens, not equal. Many people, usually ministers, thought whites were “The Chosen People”, that anyone of color was cursed and destined to be a servant. African Americans were almost viewed as animals, and not humans, they were definitely treated that way. After years of fighting and trying to be equal with the white race, African Americans were granted their wish of having rights, and the horrible treatment ended, or so they thought. That’s where the Jim Crow laws began.

Disregarding the way that African Americans had been really freed from enslavement, lifted to the status of nationals and the men given full voting rights toward the end of the American Civil War, various continued going up against money related and political concealment. A course of action of legitimate isolation, known as Jim Crow laws, were pervasive in the American South, ensuring that Black Americans stayed workers. They experienced partition from associations and governments, and in a couple spots were kept from voting through intimidation and ruthlessness. Twenty-one states confined interracial

In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional separate schools for blacks and whites. White Citizens Councils, joined by prominent citizens, sprouted throughout the South. “They vowed that integration would never take place. In this atmosphere, the social protests of the civil rights movement were born” (-Constitutional Rights Foundation). In 1956 the court ruling declaring segregation of the Montgomery bus system illegal, which was a major victory for Rosa Park and Martin Luther King with thousands of other black protestors.