B LACK
C ODES 1865-66
"Black Codes" were legal statutes and constitutional amendments enacted by the ex-Confederate states following the Civil War that sought to restrict the liberties of newly freed slaves, to ensure a supply of inexpensive agricultural labor, and maintain a white dominated hierarchy.1 However, the history of Black Codes did not begin with the collap of the Confederacy.2 Prior to the Civil War, southern states enacted Slave Codes to regulate the institution of slavery.3 Furthermore, northern, non-slave holding states enacted laws to limit the black political power and social mobility.4 For example, in 1804, Ohio enacted laws prohibiting free blacks from immigrating into the state.5 In 1813, the State of Illinois enacted a law banning free blacks outright from immigrating into the State.6
Black Codes adopted after the Civil War borrowed elements from the antebellum slave laws and from the laws of the northern states ud to regulate free blacks.7 Some Black Codes incorporated morality claus bad on antebellum slave laws into Back Code labor laws. For example, in Texas, a morality clau was ud to make it crime for laborers to u offensive language in the prence of their employers, his agents, or his family members.8 Borrowing from the Ohio and Illinois codes, Arkansas enacted an ordinance banning free blacks from immigrating into the state.9
In the end, the Black Codes were largely extinguished when Radical Republican Reconstruction efforts began in 1866-67, and with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights legislation.10 Though the statutory lives of the Black Codes were short-lived, they are significant in that they rved as precursors to the Jim Crow laws and social gregation among whites and blacks.11 For example, Arkansas pasd a law prohibiting black children from
attending school with children.12 The Texas legislature enacted a law requiring railroad companies to t aside a pasnger car for black pasngers.13
While each ex-Confederate state enacted its own t of Black Codes, all of them shared certain features. First, they defined the term "person of color." Second, they prevented blacks from voting, holding office, or rving on juries. Third, they prevented blacks from rving in state militias. Fourth, they mandated for poor, unemployed persons (usually blacks) be arrested for vagrancy or bound as apprentices. Fifth, they mandated and regulated labor contracts between whites and free blacks. Sixth, they prohibited interracial marriages between whites and blacks.
All of the Black Codes defined what it meant to be a “person of color.” However, the definitions were far from consistent. The Virginia legislature decreed that any person with one-fourth Negro blo
od in their veins was a person of color.14 Georgia t the limit at one-eighth.15 Still yet, the Tenne legislature declared anyone having any Negro blood at all made an individual a person of color.16
The leaders of the ex-Confederacy made no qualms about their desire to keep blacks out of the political process. To this end, all of the ex-Confederate states prevented blacks from voting, holding political office, or rving in the state militias. This view had some measure of support in the North. In an article appearing in the New York Times, an author wrote, “The denial of suffrage to the freedmen, we believe, cannot be made a bar to admission of the Southern reprentatives, for the reason is that it is no real denial of justice. No man, white or black, has title to a civil power which he has not the intelligence to exerci.”17
The Black Codes also prohibited blacks from rving in state militias. A principle reasons for the laws was probably a concern for insurrections and armed violence. However, a
corollary concern was that the prence of armed black soldiers encouraged undesirable attitudes in blacks. For example, in Florida, the state legislature drafted resolution requesting that black Union Army troops be withdrawn from their lands becau their prence alarmed whites and encouraged i
nsubordination among blacks.18 Florida also pasd laws prohibiting blacks from carry fire-arms or weapons.19 If blacks wanted to own a gun, the laws often required blacks to obtain a licen from the county judge and to have witness, usually white, vouch for their non-violent temperament.20
The vagrancy statutes were particularly harsh on freed blacks. While the statutes did not specifically target blacks in their language, they were predominately applied to blacks becau of their impoverished condition.21 In general, vagrancy statutes stipulated that any person a law enforcement officer or judge deemed to be unemployed and not owning property could be arrested and charged as a vagrant. It was easy to arrest blacks for violating vagrancy laws becau the freed blacks lacked wealth and land owning to their previous condition of rvitude, and to a lesr extent becau the federal government reneged on its promi to deliver forty acres and a mule to 40,000 freed slaves.22
Once arrested and convicted of vagrancy, a person would be forced into conditions nearly identical to slavery. They were either hired out to private individuals or forced to work public projects. They were not paid for their labor. In Florida, disobedience, tardiness, or running away could be punished by imprisonment, standing in the pillory or stockade, or flogging.23 Punishment by flogging usually consisted of receiving 39 lashes, a number frequently ud when flogging slaves.24
维生素b1的功效与作用
Apprentice statutes functioned along with vagrancy statutes to ensure a steady supply of inexpensive labor. Under apprentice laws, minors of poor parents, or parents deemed to be
vagrants, could be taken as wards of the court and bound out to a master for varying lengths of time. Males were usually bound until the age of twenty-one, females until the age of eighteen. Apprentices frequently had no choice in the trade they would be required to learn, however, masters were required to teach the apprentice a trade, provide for the apprentice’s living expens, and provide the apprentice with a basic elementary level education. Some states even required the master to provide the apprentice with a monetary gift when the apprenticeship expired. Apprentices who violated apprentice laws by running away being disobedient to their master could be imprisoned, flogged, or forced to pay damages.
表格列宽怎么设置The regulation of labor contracts with blacks was another hallmark of the Black Codes. In article appearing in a popular magazine of the time, a Southern author wrote of black people, “We should be satisfied to compel them to engage in coar, common manual labor, and to punish them for dereliction of duty or non fulfillment of their contracts with such verity, as to make them uful, productive laborers.”25 Under the Black Code labor regime, blacks were free to work for any one they cho, but they were required to sign contracts that bound them to the employer at least a year.
Once the contract was signed, blacks could not get out of the contract unless a court first declared the master violated the contract first. This deprived blacks of the opportunity to accept better paying jobs if they aro, and insured landowners had a steady supply of cheap labor.
Punishment for blacks who broke their labor contracts included payment of damages, imprisonment. In states like Florida, it also included standing in the stockade or floggings. In Florida, behavior that constituted a breach of the contract included laziness, failure to appear for work, using offensive language with the employer, or running away.26 Most of the slave codes
also made it a criminal offen for anyone to entice or encourage a black laborer to break an existing labor contract.
Criminal laws also played an important aspect in the Black Codes. To varying degrees, ex-Confederate states pasd criminal laws that prohibited petty that blacks were more likely to commit due to their immediate condition. For example, the Louisiana Penal Codes specifically criminalized trespassing on plantations.27 Becau free blacks often had no place to live other than on their previous master’s plantation, they were more likely to be arrested under the statutes.
老歌歌词Penal Codes also specifically targeted blacks by inflicting harsher punishments for some crimes than
whites convicted of the same crime. Unequal punishment was important for keeping blacks in a condition of rvitude.28 For example, a North Carolina statute made it a capital offen for a black person to assault a white woman with intent to rape.29
Finally, the Black Codes uniformly prohibited interracial marriages between blacks and whites. For example, in Texas anti-interracial marriage laws called for the punishment of both spous with a fine, imprisonment or both.30 It was a criminal offen, as it was in Georgia, for anyone to knowingly marry a white and black person.31 And frequently county clerks were required to record marriages of blacks and whites in parate registries.
Converly, the Black Codes also uniformly recognized black marriages and the legitimacy of children born to black parents. However, many Black Codes made it a criminal offen under adultery and fornication laws for blacks to live together without getting married or registering as a married couple with the county clerk. The statutes were frequently applied to blacks living in rural areas who were living together as result of their impoverished condition.32
1See B LACK’S L AW D ICTIONARY 163 (7th ed. 1999). See also Joe Louis Caldwell, Black Codes, in E NCYCLOPEDIA OF A FRICAN-A MERICAN C IVIL R IGHTS 50-51 (Charles D. Lowery & John F. Marszalek eds., 1992).
2 Wikipedia, Black Codes, available at en.wikipedia/wiki/Black_codes (last visited April 11, 2005).
3See B LACK’S L AW D ICTIONARY 163 (7th ed. 1999).
4 Wikipedia, Black Codes.
5Id.
6Id.
7Id.
8 An Act regulating Contracts of Labor, ch. 130 §9 (Texas 1866).
9 Ordinances of the Convention 29 (Ark. 1865).
网络人生10 Caldwell, Black Codes.
11Id.
12 An Act to declare the rights of persons of African descent, No. 35 § 5 (Ark. 1867).
13 An Act requiring Railroad Companies to provide convenient accommodations for Freedmen, ch. 103, § 1 (Tex. 1866).
开斋节是哪个民族的节日14An ACT to amend and re-enact the 9th ction of chapter 103 of the Code of Virginia for 1860, defining a Mulatto, providing for the punishment of Offences by Colored Persons, and for the admission of their Evidence in Legal Investigations ; and to repeal all Laws in relation to Slaves and Slavery, and for other purpos, ch. 17 § 1 (Va. 1866). February 27, 1866.
15 An Act to define the term “persons of color,” and to declare the rights of such persons, No. 250 § 1 (Ga. 1866).
山东录取分数线16 An Act to define the term “Person of Color,” and to declare the rights of such persons, ch. 56 § 1 (Tenn. 1866). 17The Progress of Reconstruction, N EW Y ORK T IMES,Oct. 3, 1865, available at ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
18 Resolution, No. 18 (Fla. 1865).教育顾问
19 An Act prescribing additional penalties for the commission of offences against the State, and for other purpos, ch. 1,466, No. 3 § 12 (Fla. 1866).
20Id.
21 Caldwell, Black Codes.
宝宝吐22See id. See also Dan T. Carter, Emancipation, in D ICTIONARY OF A FRO-A MERICAN S LAVERY 218 (Randall M. Miller & John David Smith eds. 1988).
23 An Act to punish Vagrants and Vagabonds, ch. 1,467. No. 4 § 1 (Fla. 1865).
