Black Codes (United States)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866 in the United States after the American Civil War with the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. Black Codes were part of a larger pattern of Southern whites, who were trying to suppress the new freedom of emancipated African-American slaves, the freedmen. Black codes were essentially replacements for slave codes in those states. Before the war in states that prohibited slavery, some Black Codes were also enacted. Northern states such as Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and New York enacted Black Codes to discourage free blacks from residing in those states and denying them equal rights, including the right to vote, the right to public education, and the right to equal treatment under the law. Some of these northern black codes were repealed around the same time that the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished.
See also
- 40 acres and a mule
- Apartheid in South Africa
- Code Noir
- Grandfather clause
- Judicial aspects of race in the United States
- List of Jim Crow law examples by state
- Oregon black exclusion laws
- Racial segregation in the United States
- Redlining
- Republic of New Afrika
- Reverse Underground Railroad
- Wage slavery
- History of unfree labor in the United States