Historical+Event-NO

The Black Codes & Racial Oppression


Finally in 1863, blacks were considered free by the order of the emancipation proclamation. Unfortunately, whites still had it ingrained in their minds that blacks were an inferior race, and could never rise to the level of intelligence that whites were at. Southern whites especially, were too narrow-minded to notice great minds such as [|Frederick Douglass]. So as soon as the Civil War ended and Reconstruction began, Southern states passed Black Codes which prohibited blacks from exercising many of their newly gained rights.

As if the Black Codes weren't enough, many Southern states passed the Jim Crow Laws to further oppress black citizens. These laws said that blacks and white were equal, but should remain separate. Whites still felt that they were a superior race, and would do whatever it took to keep blacks in the quagmire that they had been in for decades passed. These laws led to the segregation of many services, such as restaurants, bathrooms, and drinking fountains. Blacks were left with many inferior services because they were mentally inferior to whites.

White supremacy was burgeoning in the South, because as we all know, whites felt that God had created them to automatically be superior to their black counterparts. And just because the law stated that blacks and whites were equal didn't mean it had to be that way. The Ku Klux Klan was formed, along with many other white supremacy groups to oppress blacks who had just been given many civil liberties, including the right to vote. Klansmen agreed that there was no way blacks should be allowed to even make it to the voting polls, so they made blacks feel as unwelcome as possible whenever possible.

"The Black Codes excluded African-Americans from some professions, forbade interracial marriage, and prohibited the use of firearms. Taking advantage of freedmen's economic vulnerability, the black codes also permitted forced labor of one convicted of vagrancy-that is, of lacking a job and a home.

"After the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, all former slave states adopted new Black Codes. During 1865, the first year of Reconstruction, every southern state passed new Black Codes that restricted the Freedmen, who were free but not yet citizens. They gave freedmen only a limited set of second-class civil rights and no voting rights, while pursuing a goal of re-admission to the Union. Southern plantation owners feared that they would lose their land or, if not, that blacks would not do their field work; many Southern whites feared that blacks would consider themselves their equals." [Wikipedia([|The Black Codes)]]

"The Jim Crow Laws were state and local laws enacted in the Southern and Border States of the United States and enforced between 1876 and 1965. They mandated "separate but equal" status for African Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were almost always inferior to those provided to white Americans. The "Jim Crow period" or the "Jim Crow era" refers to the time during which this practice occurred. The most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for whites and blacks." [Wikipedia([|Jim Crow Laws)]]

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