From the ashes of the American Civil emerged the freedom of slaves in late 1865. The freedom of slaves put some form of uncertainty and unease to the southern states. Although the slavery institution was prohibited and burned in the law, the states enacted a series of laws in their state laws that defined the freedom of the African Americans. For the freed slaves, this was a new and legal set of obstacles for their freedom. These restrictive laws were regarded as the black codes. The principal purpose of the black codes was to maintain control of the freed blacks and to ensure that they were still available for labor. Therefore the codes were especially white-centric and discriminatory against the blacks. With the examination of the Texas black codes, this paper will be particularly analytical of the black codes.
The black codes provided some form of freedoms that acted as some fundamental rights; they included rights such as the right to make contracts as well as wills, rights of ownership, lease and disposal of property. These freedoms of the thirteenth amendment were watershed by the enactment of the black codes in several southern states in 1865 and 1866 1 . The black codes varied widely from one state to the next; however, there were distinct themes that the black codes contained.
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Enactments of the black codes were made in the predominant fear of the Southerners that the freed slaves would be seeking revenge due to slavery. Therefore, to ease the fears of the whites, the state legislature enacted series of laws that attempted to control the blacks. The laws that followed this theme were on the basis that the freed persons should not stay idle. For instance, the state of Louisiana burned idleness of the freed slaves and required them to have proof of means of support and a home within 20days. Failure to compile to that directive meant that the person with no such evidence was to be arrested. These shows the level of discrimination that was perpetuated by the southern state of the freedom granted to the slaves did not guarantee shelter as well as fair wages or even work.
There were other laws enacted on the rise of labor issues. The outlaw of slavery meant that there was a huge deficit of labor in the southern states. Plantation owners had great prosperity due to the unpaid slave labor, freeing of slavery meant lower profit margins. To solve this issue, the states under the influence of the landowners enacted the black codes that in favor of the landowners. Under the black code established on this theme, they subjected the African Americans to legal servitude 2 . The situation created by the laws was similar to slavery conditions and in some cases worse. This was the provision of legally forced labor where blacks were arrested if they were not working.
The black codes came under fire from the northern states as well as radical political organizations as they undermined the fundamental rights of the thirteenth amendment. Progressively, these laws were faced out to give way for total freedom the African Americans. The Texas black codes provide an insight of the level of discrimination against the blacks after the civil war.
Bibliography
Crouch, Barry A. " All the Vile Passions": The Texas Black Code of 1866.". Vol. 97. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 1993.
Santos, Xuan, and Christopher Bickel. "Apartheid Justice: Gang Injunctions and the New Black Codes." In Race, Ethnicity, and Law, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017.
1 Crouch, Barry A. " All the Vile Passions": The Texas Black Code of 1866.". Vol. 97. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 1993.
2 Santos, Xuan, and Christopher Bickel. "Apartheid Justice: Gang Injunctions and the New Black Codes." In Race, Ethnicity, and Law, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017.
