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Black Codes
The Black Codes was a series of laws designed to regulate the affairs of the emancipated slaves.
The Black Codes aimed to ensure a stable and subservient labor force. They also sought to restore the pre-emancipation system of race relations. They forbade a black to serve on a jury or to vote. They mocked the idea of freedom and imposed hardships on the blacks who were struggling against mistreatment and poverty to make their way as free.The Republicans opposed to the Black Codes. -
The Freedmen's Bureau
Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau on March 3, 1865 to provide clothing, medical care, food, and education to both freedmen and white refugees. Union general Oliver O. Howard led the bureau. The bureau's greatest success was teaching blacks to read. Because it was despised by the President and by Southerners, the Freedmen's Bureau expired in 1872. -
14th Amendment
Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill in March 1866, which gave blacks the privilege of American citizenship and struck at the Black Codes. Fearing that the Southerners might someday repeal the Civil Rights Law, Congress passed the 14th Amendment in 1866. The amendment Gave civil rights, including citizenship, to the freedmen; Reduced proportionately the representation of a state in Congress and in the Electoral College if it denied blacks the right to vote. -
The Ku Klux Klan
The "Invisible Empire of the South", known as the Ku Klux Klan, was founded in Tennessee in 1866. It was formed by disgruntled white Southerners who were angered by the success of black legislators. They worked through intimidation. Congress passed the Force Acts of 1870 and 1871 in response to murders that the Klan had committed. The Acts enabled Federal troops to stop the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan. The Acts came too late, as the Klan had already intimidated many people. -
15th Amendment
On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act. It divided the South into 5 military districts, each commanded by a Union general and policed by Union soldiers. It also required that states wishing to be re-admitted into the Union had to ratify the 14th Amendment, and that states' constitutions allowed former adult male slaves to vote. The 15th Amendment was passed by Congress in 1869. It granted black men the right to vote. -
Jim Crow
After Reconstruction white Democrats resumed political power in the South & enact laws discriminating against blacks. Blacks were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming. Small farmers who rented land from the plantation owners were kept in debt and forced to continue to work for the owners. state-level legal codes of segregation known as Jim Crow laws were enacted. The Southern states enacted literacy requirements, voter-registration law, poll taxes so that S. blacks couldnt vote