Concept

Black Codes

Discriminatory state laws passed across the South in 1865-1866 that restricted formerly enslaved people's civic rights and tied them to plantation labor in the absence of slavery itself.

Laws some southern states designed to maintain white supremacy by keeping freed people impoverished and in debt. They restricted the civic participation of freed slaves -- depriving them of the right to vote, serve on juries, own or carry weapons, and in some cases rent or lease land -- while forcing freedpeople into one-employer labor contracts enforced by vagrancy arrests.