Download Black Codes

Black Codes
Jim Crow Laws
"No negro or freedman shall be permitted to rent or keep a
house within the limits of the town under any circumstances. . . . No
negro or freedman shall reside within the limits of the town . . . who
is not in the regular service of some white person or former owner. . .
. No public meetings or congregations of negroes or freedmen shall
be allowed within the limits of the town. . . . No negro or freedman
shall be permitted to preach, exhort, or otherwise declaim to
congregations of colored people without a special permission from
the mayor or president of the board of police.. .. No freedman ... shall
be allowed to carry firearms, or any kind of weapons.... No freedman
shall sell, barter, or exchange any article of merchandise within the
limits of Opelousas without permission in writing from his employer
In the parish of St. Landry it was required "that every negro [is] to be
in the service of some white person, or former owner. ...
Jim Crow etiquette operated in conjunction with Jim Crow laws
(black codes). When most people think of Jim Crow they think of
laws (not the Jim Crow etiquette) which excluded Blacks from public
transport and facilities, juries, jobs, and neighborhoods. The
passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution
had granted Blacks the same legal protections as Whites. However,
after 1877, and the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes,
southern and border states began restricting the liberties of Blacks.
Unfortunately for Blacks, the Supreme Court helped undermine the
Constitutional protections of Blacks with the infamous Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896) case, which legitimized Jim Crow laws and the Jim
Crow way of life.
13 Amendment- Ratified 1865
14 Amendment –Ratified 1868
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.
Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislatio
15 Amendment – Ratified 1870
Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article
by appropriate legislation.
Cycle of Debt
By the end of Reconstruction, rural poverty was deeply rooted in
the South, among blacks and whites alike. Both groups remained in
a cycle f debt, in which this year’s profit went to pay last year’s bills.
In cotton states, only about one black family in 20 owned land after a
decade of Reconstruction.
Voter Qualifications
Corruption During Reconstruction
In the 1890s, these states began to amend their constitutions and
to enact a series of laws intended to re-establish and entrench white
political supremacy. Such disfranchising laws included poll taxes,
literacy tests, vouchers of "good character," and disqualification for
"crimes of moral turpitude." These laws were "color-blind" on their
face, but were designed to exclude black citizens disproportionately
by allowing white election officials to apply the procedures
selectively. Other laws and practices, such as the "white primary,",
attempted to evade the 15th Amendment by allowing "private"
political parties to conduct elections and establish qualifications for
their members.
During the era of Reconstruction, enormous sums of money
changed hands rapidly in the form of fraudulent loans and grants.
Participants in such schemes included blacks and whites,
Republicans and Democrats, southerners and northern
carpetbaggers. “You are mistaken if you suppose that all the
evils…result from the carpetbaggers and negroes,” a Louisiana man
wrote to a northern fellow Democrat.
The Kansas State Globe
Booker T. Washington
At 25, Booker T. Washington was appointed principal of the
The Kansas State Globe, an African American newspaper
newly established "Tuskegee Normal School for colored teachers."
pictured here, is published in Wyandotte, Kansas.
There were no buildings when he arrived. On July 4, 1881,
Washington held his first classes for thirty male and female students
in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The first permanent
building was constructed a year later. It was designed by AfricanAmerican instructors and built by African-American students, a
tradition that would thrive at Tuskegee. In 1885 the first students
graduated.
Washington was determined to bring the best and brightest
teachers to Tuskegee "not only for the money but also their deep
interest in the race." Tuskegee embodied his total commitment to
learning, self-help, practical training, and service to the community.
Teachers trained to work with rural communities to improve farming,
In the 1870s former slave Benjamin "Pap" Singleton envisioned
thriving midwestern communities populated by African Americans.
Singleton placed his hopes for a better life on a colonizing campaign
he directed toward residents of Kentucky and Tennessee. He
successfully distributed his message through African American
newspapers.
Two hundred Black settlers responded to "Pap" Singleton's
campaign, moving west to Nicodemus in Graham County, Kansas.
They completed their long journey from Lexington, Kentucky, to the
central Kansas plains in 1878. By 1886 the community supported
three Black newspapers.
hygiene, and nutrition. Agricultural training provided experience and
Black newspapers offer insight into the history of African
food for the table. Students learned trades to make them marketable
American communities. These local publications often featured
and self-supporting. Tuskegee taught "classroom education
church news and items of specific interest to readers, usually without
...practical knowledge, industry, thrift, and economy, that they
the support of advertising. They also discussed issues considered
(students) would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they
politically incorrect by other publishers.
had left us."
Reconstruction Act of 1867
Southern Plantations
The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was passed
by Congress in 1867. The amendment was designed to grant
citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed
slaves. Most Southern states refused to ratify this amendment
and therefore Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus
Stevens, Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade, Henry Winter
Davies and Benjamin Butler urged the passing of further
legislation to impose these measures on the former
Confederacy.
Congress passed the first Reconstruction Act on 2nd
March, 1867. The South was now divided into five military
districts, each under a major general. New elections were to
be held in each state with freed male slaves being allowed to
vote. The act also included an amendment that offered
readmission to the Southern states after they had ratified the
Fourteenth Amendment and guaranteed adult male suffrage.
President Andrew Johnson immediately vetoed the bill but
Congress re-passed the bill the same day.
Andrew Johnson consulted General Ulysses S. Grant
before selecting the generals to administer the military
districts. Eventually he appointed John Schofield (Virginia),
Daniel Sickles (the Carolinas), John Pope (Georgia, Alabama
and Florida), Edward Ord (Arkansas and Mississippi) and
Philip Sheridan (Louisiana and Texas).
It soon became clear that the Southern states would prefer
military rule to civil government based on universal male
suffrage. Congress therefore passed a supplementary
Reconstruction Act on 23rd March that authorized the
military commanders to supervise elections and generally to
provide the machinery for constituting new governments.
Once again Andrew Johnson vetoed the act on the grounds
that it interfered with the right of the American citizen to "be
left to the free exercise of his own judgment when he is
engaged in the work of forming the fundamental law under
which he is to live."
The first two Reconstruction Act were followed by a series
of supplementary acts that authorized the military
commanders to register the voters and supervise the
elections. As a result of these measures all of the states had
returned to the Union by 1870.
Maps of the Barrow Plantation, Scribner's Monthly, April 1881
Two maps illustrate the effects of emancipation on plantation life
in the South. In 1860, slaves lived in communal quarters near the
owner's house, subject to frequent contact and strict control.
Twenty years later, former slaves working as sharecroppers lived
away from "The House" on separate plots of land and had their own
church and school.
However, the "Gin house," where sharecroppers had their cotton
cleaned, remained in the same location, central to the economic life
of the plantation.
Blacks Elected in Mississippi
In March, 1867 Congress passed the Reconstruction Act,
opening the era of Congressional Reconstruction. The Act divided
the South into five military districts and disenfranchised large
numbers of white southerners. The result was black voting majorities
in five southern states. This soon led to the election of numerous
blacks to high political office, as shown in this photo montage from
Mississippi. Amongst the distinguished lawyers and politicians
depicted here are Blanche K. Bruce and Hiram Revels (at left and
right of the Old Capitol building). Both men were elected to the U.S.
Senate, while their colleague John R. Lynch (located below Bruce in
the picture) served in the U.S. House of Representatives—one of
twenty African-Americans to be elected there during the
Reconstruction era.
KKK Propaganda
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the name of several past and present
secret organizations in the United States, generally in the southern
states, that are best known for advocating white supremacy and
acting as vigilantes while hidden behind conic masks and white
robes. The first KKK arose in the turmoil after the Civil War. It utilized
terrorism, violence, and lynching to intimidate and oppress African
Americans, Jews, Roman Catholics, and other racial and religious
minorities.
Marriages
"Marriage of a Colored Soldier at Vicksburg,"
Alfred R. Waud, c. 1865.
Before the era of Reconstruction, there were laws in effect that
outlawed slaves from marrying.
In the early days of freedom, thousands of African-Americans
married under the authority of the Freedman's Bureau, an agency
established by the federal government to look after the needs of the
former slave.
Bureau records indicate that some marriages involved young
men and women marrying for the first time, while others legalized
slave unions made years before.
Lynching – Early 20th Century
Between 1882, when reliable data was first collected, and 1968,
when the crime had largely disappeared, there were at least 4,730
lynchings in the United States, including some 3,440 black men and
women. Most of these were in the post-Reconstruction South
between 1882 and 1944, where southern whites used lynching and
other terror tactics to intimidate blacks into political, social, and
economic submission. In many cases lynching’s were not
spontaneous mob violence but involved a degree of planning and
law-enforcement cooperation. Racially motivated lynchings, which
often involved the mutilation of the victim, might be witnessed by an
entire community as a diverting spectacle.
Election - 1876
Freedman’s Schools
Hill School,
ca. late 19th Century, Christiansburg Institute Collection.
At left: Teacher and elementary school students posing on steps of the
Pictured here is Mrs. United States who declines presidential
hopeful Tilden’s (left) offer to dance in order to keep her promise to
President Hayes.
Sharecropping
After the Civil War many planters had ample land but little money
for wages. At the same time most of the former slaves were
uneducated and impoverished. The solution was the sharecropping
system, which continued the worker in the routine of cotton
cultivation under rigid supervision. The cropper brought only his own
and his family’s labor. Most other requirements-land, animals,
equipment, and seed-were provided by the landlord, who generally
also advanced credit to meet the living expenses of the cropper
family. Most croppers worked under the close direction of the
landlord, and he marketed the crop and kept accounts. Normally in
return for their work they received a share (usually half) of the
money made. From this share the landlord deducted any debt. High
interest charges, emphasis on production of a single cash crop, bad
accounting, and chronic cropper irresponsibility were among the
abuses of the system. This system almost always resulted in a cycle
of debt that was almost impossible to break.
African Americans in the South after the Civil War crowded into
one-room schools opened by the U.S. Freedmen's Bureau and
northern-based aid societies. Christiansburg Institute began in 1866
as one such school. It was spearheaded by Charles S. Schaeffer, a
white Bureau officer and a fervent Baptist. Over the next three
decades, he and the Friends' Freedmen's Association (FFA) of
Philadelphia raised most of the school's funding. It was stewarded by
a local African-American board of trustees and shared its grounds
with the newly founded Christiansburg African Baptist Church.
Plessy vs. Ferguson Cartoon