Post Slavery in the South

Slavery in the United States was abolished in the form of the 13th amendment on December 6, 1865, after being passed and ratified in Congress. The 14th amendment gave African Americans citizenship legally and the 15th amendment gave them (men) the right to vote. However, this didn't necessarily stop the enactment of slavery, it simply meant that white plantation owners couldn't call them 'slaves'. The white population, especially in the south, benefited from slavery and didn't want to integrate with 'freed' African Americans. So, the Black Codes were enacted to ensure it wouldn't be a possibility.

According to the Khan Academy's Unit 5 on US History, Black Codes were laws that gave African Americans certain privileges but make it clear want they couldn't do. They could sue in court but weren't allowed to be on juries or testify against whites, for an example. "If they refused they could be arrested and hired out for work" (Life After Slavery for African Americans (Article) | Khan Academy, n.d.). Being hired out for work meant potentially putting ex-slaves back on the plantation that enslaved them in the first place.

During this time, sharecropping was on the rise. Sharecropping is simple terms was farming on a white settler's land in order to rent out a portion of that land. In the event that African Americans had nowhere to go after being freed, "many black families rented land from white owners and raised cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and rice" (Sharecropping | Themes | Slavery by Another Name | PBS, n.d.).

The Black Codes required those partaking in sharecropping to sign annual labor contracts. If you didn't sign you'd be arrested and forced to "work for free" but by being a sharecropper, African Americans were still at the mercy of landowners who valued how the share of crops and what African Americans could keep. Funny how that works.

It wouldn't be until after Jim Crow laws were outlawed in 1954, which was 69 years ago, that African Americans began to see and feel their rights as noted in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.