Black Codes
Toward the end of 1865, the old Confederate states held constitutional conventions and framed new state governments with only whites participating. The white legislatures continued the tradition of unequal treatment of blacks. They passed laws which prevented them from voting, traveling freely, working in occupations of their choice or serving on juries. These laws became known as the "Black Codes" and were enforced with harsh punishments. |
Reconstruction
Outraged by the South's attempt to restore slavery through the Black Codes, Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 dividing Confederate states into five military districts. The Southern states had to incorporate the 13th and 14th amendments into their constitutions, the Black Codes were repealed, and blacks were empowered with the vote.
"Now we are free. What do we want? We want education; we want protection; we want plenty of work; we want good pay for it, but not any more or less than any one else ... and then you will see the down-trodden race rise up."
- John Adams, a former slave |
"Voters in the South elected more than 600 African American state legislators and 16 members of Congress. Black and white citizens established several progressive state governments that attempted to extend educational opportunities and civil and political rights to everyone." - Smithsonian National Museum of American History |
These new rights did not last long.
"Most whites rallied around the Democratic Party as the party of white supremacy. Between 1868 and 1871, terrorist organizations ... working with Democrats in several states, used fraud and violence to help whites regain control of their state governments. ... By the time the last federal troops had been withdrawn in 1877, Reconstruction was all but over and the Democratic Party controlled the destiny of the South."
- PBS, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
- PBS, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Jim Crow Laws
Following the end of Reconstruction, the white supremacists controlling the state and local governments of the former confederacy constructed a legal system known as Jim Crow laws aimed at re-establishing a white dominated society. These laws kept whites and people of color separate from each other. They were intended to create "separate but equal" treatment. They were indeed separate, but they were not equal.
"They [Jim Crow laws] constituted the most elaborate and formal expression of sovereign white opinion upon the subject. ... That code lent the sanction of law to a racial ostracism that extended to churches and schools, to housing and jobs, to eating and drinking. Whether by law or by custom, that ostracism eventually extended to virtually all forms of public transportation, to sports and recreations, to hospitals, orphanages, prisons, and asylums, and ultimately to funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries."
- C. Vann Woodward, "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" |