These were laws passed by Southern states between 1865 and 1866. Designed to control black populations, they restricted African Americans’ freedom to move, to work independently, and contribute as citizens. Most of the codes were removed by 1868. However, they were replaced by new codes called Jim Crow laws that made it illegal for black and white citizens to share public spaces.
SECTION 1. Be it ordained by the police jury of the parish of St. Landry, That no negro shall be allowed to pass within the limits of said parish without a special permit in writing from his employer.
Whoever shall violate this provision shall pay a fine of two dollars and fifty cents, or in default thereof shall be forced to work four days on the public road, or suffer corporal punishments as provided hereinafter.
The Black Codes
SECTION 4. Be it further ordained, That every negro is required to be in the regular service of some white person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conduct of said negro. But said employer or former owner may permit said negro to hire his own time by special permission in writing, which permission shall not extend over seven days at any one time. Any negro violating the provisions of this section shall be fined five dollars for each offence, or in default of the payment thereof shall be forced to work five days on the public road, or suffer corporal punishment as hereinafter provided.
The Black Codes
Section 1. Be it enacted by the legislature of the state of Mississippi, that it shall be the duty of all sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other civil officers of the several counties in this state to report to the... courts... all freedmen, free Negroes, and mulattoes under the age of eighteen within their respective counties, beats, or districts who are orphans, or whose parent or parents have not the means, or who refuse to provide for and support said minors; the court will be ordered to apprentice said minors to some competent and suitable person,
Provided, that said apprentice shall be an indentured servant, in case of males until they are twenty-one years old, and in case of females until they are eighteen years old.
The Black Codes
XXXV. All persons of color who make contracts for service or labor, shall be known as servants, and those with whom they contract, shall be known as masters.
The Black Codes
The Black Codes
SEC. 202. All persons shall be entitled to be free, at any establishment or place, from discrimination or segregation of any kind on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin, if such discrimination or segregation is or purports to be required by any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, rule, or order of a State or any agency or political subdivision thereof.
This is a system of labor in which a landowner rents land to a tenant. In return, the tenant shares a portion of the crop grown back with the landowner at the end of the season. Both African Americans and whites could be sharecroppers.
A sharecropper in front of her home, 1937.
Sharecropping
Cotton on a sharecropper’s porch, 1935.
Sharecropping
To everyone renting land, the following conditions must be agreed to:��For every 30 acres of land (rented by sharecroppers), I will provide a mule team, plow, and farming tools. The sharecroppers can have half of the cotton, corn, peas, pumpkins, and potatoes they grow if the following conditions are followed, but if not they are to have only two-fifths. ��For every mule or horse provided by me there must be 1000 good sized rails (logs) hauled, and the fence repaired if I so direct. All sharecroppers must haul rails (logs) and work on the fence whenever I may order. The wood must be split and the fence repaired before corn is planted. No cotton must be planted by sharecroppers on their home patches of land. No sharecropper is to work off the plantation when there is any work for them to do for me. ��Every sharecropper must be responsible for all farming gear placed in his hands, and if not returned must be paid for unless it is worn out by use.
�The sale of every sharecropper's part of the cotton to be made by me when and where I choose to sell, and after taking all they owe me.
A Sharecropping Contract: 1882
Source: Grimes Family Papers, 1882.
Sharecropping
A Young Sharecropper, 1938.
Sharecropping
This was a system of labor in which convicts were rented out to corporations by the government to labor for free. Those arrested were often falsely convicted or convicted for very minor crimes.
Convicts leased to harvest timber circa 1915, in Florida
Convict Leasing
Convict Laborers, 1934.
Convict Leasing
“We as convicts, is somethin’ like a man drowning. We have bin convicted of felonies, and because of that, we have lost every friend on Earth.
All these years of how we suffered, we have looked death in the face, worked hungry, thirsty, half-clothed and sore.”
Ezekiel Archey, a convict laborer working in the Pratt Mines, 1884.
Convict Leasing
Young Convict Laborers in the field, 1903.
Convict Leasing
Many southern states created poll taxes that required individuals to pay a tax before they could vote.
These were tests that African Americans were required to pass before they could vote.
Poll Tax Receipts
Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests
AN ACT To enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes.
SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests
Example Questions from a Literacy Test
This test is from Louisiana, 1960s.
Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests
Example Questions from a Literacy Test
This test is from Louisiana, 1960s.
Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests
These were groups of African Americans who established black churches, black schools, newspapers and community organizations. They were of ten segregated from whites.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers, 1873. African American singers from Fisk University, an African American college established in the south after the war.
Building Black Communities
Harper’s Weekly, June 27th, 1874
Building Black Communities
75 sixth grade children crowded into a classroom in Muskogee Oklahoma, March, 1917.
Building Black Communities
Number of Organizations
Number of Church (buildings)
Value of Church property
Number of Churchgoers
This chart was made to show the number of former African slaves who were now attending African American churches.
Created by W.E.B. DuBois (1900)
Building Black Communities
Colored School at Anthoston. Census 27, enrollment 12, attendance 7. Teacher expects 19 to be enrolled after work is over. "Tobacco keeps them out and they are short of hands." September 13th, 1919.
Building Black Communities
Young cotton picker, Pulaski County, Arkansas. Schools for black children did not open until January 1st because they had to pick cotton, October, 1935.
Building Black Communities
These were governments that were led by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. They ended the Black Codes and passed laws that reformed education, voting qualifications and the economy.
“The First Vote,” 1867.
Black Leadership in Government
Black Leadership in Government
"ONE VOTE LESS"
Harper's Weekly, August 8, 1868.
Black Leadership in Government
“By 1877, when Reconstruction ended, my estimate is that about 2,000 black men held some official position. There were other important figures—political organizers, newspaper editors—but these were people who actually held public office.
In South Carolina, some black men continued to hold one office or another until around the turn of the century. Then, it pretty much ended. The next significant group of black officials emerged in the North in the 1920s and ’30s as a result of black migration and the beginnings of black political power there, but it was not until after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that America again saw the rise of African American officeholding in any significant numbers in the South.”
Eric Foner, Historian
(for slate.com)
Black Leadership in Government