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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 collapse 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 used to regulate free blacks.
7
Some Black Codes
incorporated morality clauses based on antebellum slave laws into Back Code labor laws. For
example, in Texas, a morality clause was used to make it crime for laborers to use offensive
language in the presence 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 served as precursors to the Jim Crow laws and social segregation among
whites and blacks.
11
For example, Arkansas passed a law prohibiting black children from
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attending school with children.
12
The Texas legislature enacted a law requiring railroad
companies to set aside a passenger car for black passengers.
13
While each ex-Confederate state enacted its own set 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 serving on juries. Third, they prevented blacks from serving 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, these
definitions were far from consistent. The Virginia legislature decreed that any person with one-
fourth Negro blood in their veins was a person of color.
14
Georgia set the limit at one-eighth.
15
Still yet, the Tennessee 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 serving 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 representatives, 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 exercise.”
17
The Black Codes also prohibited blacks from serving in state militias. A principle reasons
for these laws was probably a concern for insurrections and armed violence. However, a
2
corollary concern was that the presence 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 because their presence alarmed whites and
encouraged insubordination among blacks.
18
Florida also passed laws prohibiting blacks from
carry fire-arms or weapons.
19
If blacks wanted to own a gun, these laws often required blacks to
obtain a license from the county judge and to have witnesses, usually white, vouch for their non-
violent temperament.
20
The vagrancy statutes were particularly harsh on freed blacks. While these statutes did
not specifically target blacks in their language, they were predominately applied to blacks
because 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 because the freed blacks lacked wealth and land owning to their previous condition of
servitude, and to a lesser extent because the federal government reneged on its promise 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 used when
flogging slaves.
24
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
3
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
expenses, 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.
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 coarse, common manual labor, and to
punish them for dereliction of duty or non fulfillment of their contracts with such severity, as to
make them useful, productive laborers.”
25
Under the Black Code labor regime, blacks were free
to work for any one they chose, 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 arose, 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
4
also made it a criminal offense 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 passed 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
Because free blacks often had no place to live other
than on their previous master’s plantation, they were more likely to be arrested under these
statutes.
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 servitude.
28
For example, a North Carolina statute made it a capital
offense 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
spouses with a fine, imprisonment or both.
30
It was a criminal offense, 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 separate registries.
Conversely, 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
offense under adultery and fornication laws for blacks to live together without getting married or
registering as a married couple with the county clerk. These statutes were frequently applied to
blacks living in rural areas who were living together as result of their impoverished condition.
32
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