Keith Mack
For over 400 years, laws in the United States have profoundly impacted the lives of Black people, with racial inequality deeply rooted in American society and perpetuated by the Constitution, statutes, court cases, and regulations. One of the earliest known legal distinctions between Africans and Europeans was made in 1640 in Virginia, and the legacy of discriminatory legislation has persisted. From the Black Codes of the mid-19th century to the Civil Rights Acts of the 20th century, this paragraph will explore the evolution of laws targeting Black individuals and the ongoing struggle for racial equality.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Black Codes | Restricted the right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces |
| Restricted political franchise and economic opportunity, with heavy legal penalties for vagrancy and restrictive employment contracts | |
| Did not mention Black people explicitly but were clearly directed towards them | |
| Included new vagrancy and apprentice laws | |
| Outlawed intermarriage, concubinage, and miscegenation | |
| Outlawed receiving donations or inheritance from a white person | |
| Jim Crow Laws | Enforced racial segregation |
| Curtailed the power of Black voters | |
| Mandated racial segregation in all public facilities | |
| Outlawed interracial cohabitation | |
| Other Laws | Outlawed testifying in court against whites |
| Outlawed serving in the state militia | |
| Required a $500 bond before settling in a state | |
| Required registering certificates of freedom in the county clerk's office before getting a job | |
| Barred serving jury duty | |
| Barred from the public school system |
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What You'll Learn
Black Codes (1865-66)
The Black Codes of 1865-66 were a series of laws passed by Southern state legislatures in the United States, restricting the political and economic freedoms of Black people. The laws were enacted immediately after the Civil War, which had ended slavery for 4 million Black Southerners, but left them landless and with little money.
The primary goal of the Black Codes was to secure a stable Black labour force and restrict mobility. They were designed to replace the social controls previously exerted over Black Americans by slavery, which had been ended by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Black Codes were rooted in the slave codes that had been in effect in the South, and they continued to assume the racial and social inferiority of formerly enslaved people.
The Black Codes listed the new rights and responsibilities of freed people, including the ability to own property, marry, enter into contracts, sue or be sued, and testify in court against others of their race. However, they also imposed heavy legal penalties for vagrancy and restrictive employment contracts. States took on the role of enforcing these labour contracts, maintaining plantation discipline, and penalizing those who refused to work. Vagrancy laws allowed for the arrest and fining of unemployed Black people without a permanent residence, and they could be bound out for a term of labour if unable to pay the fine. The Black Codes also restricted the kind of property Black people could own, and the jobs they could hold, with some states limiting their ability to leave a job once hired.
The Black Codes provoked outrage among many Northerners, who accused Southern whites of trying to restore slavery. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 weakened the effect of the Black Codes by requiring all states to uphold equal protection under the 14th Amendment, and enabling Black men to vote.
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Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow system was upheld by local government officials and reinforced by acts of terror perpetrated by vigilantes. It was also supported by the successful Lily-white movement. The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) further legitimised Jim Crow laws, establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine. However, in reality, facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded, and sometimes non-existent. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, led sustained public protests and campaigns against these laws.
The last of the Jim Crow laws were generally overturned in 1965 by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Southern state anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriage, were also overturned in 1967 in the case of Loving v. Virginia.
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Voting rights
The Reconstruction Era after the Civil War saw significant changes to voting rights for African Americans. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying male citizens the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This marked a pivotal moment in extending voting rights to men of all races. However, despite these constitutional amendments, African Americans continued to face significant barriers to exercising their right to vote.
Discriminatory practices and loopholes were employed to circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment. "Grandfather clauses," poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation tactics were used to prevent African Americans, especially in the South, from voting. States like Oklahoma passed constitutional amendments that required citizens' grandfathers to have voted in 1865 for them to be eligible, effectively disqualifying the descendants of formerly enslaved people. This period also witnessed the emergence of organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which advocated for the protection and expansion of voting rights for African Americans.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s brought renewed attention to voting rights activism. Incidents like the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965, where peaceful protesters were brutally attacked, outraged the nation and prompted calls for comprehensive voting rights legislation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to address these injustices. This legislation provided federal enforcement of voting rights amendments, ensuring that adult citizens of all races and genders could vote.
While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a significant milestone, challenges to voting rights for African Americans persisted. Weak enforcement, particularly in Southern states with a high proportion of Black residents, led to ongoing voting restrictions and low voter turnout among African Americans. Despite these obstacles, there were notable successes, such as the Freedom Summer Project in Mississippi, which worked to register Black people to vote, and the election of Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce as the first African Americans to the U.S. Senate.
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Education segregation
In the United States, racial segregation in education was a legally and/or socially enforced separation of African Americans from whites. While it was not mandated by law in the Northern states, a de facto system of segregation emerged, with nearly all black students attending predominantly black schools. In the South, segregation was absolute, with white schools having only white pupils and teachers, and black schools having only black teachers and students.
De jure segregation, or segregation mandated by law, was imposed by slave codes before the Civil War and by Black Codes and Jim Crow laws following it, primarily in the Southern United States. De facto segregation, or segregation "in fact", is that which exists without the sanction of the law. De facto segregation continues today in the form of residential segregation and school segregation, due to both contemporary behaviour and the historical legacy of de jure segregation.
In the 1849 case of Roberts v. City of Boston, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were allowed under the Constitution of Massachusetts. This ruling was upheld in the US Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which ruled that separate facilities for black and white people were permissible as long as the facilities were of equal quality. This created the "separate but equal" doctrine, declaring that racial segregation was constitutional and did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This ruling relegated black people to second-class citizenship, and they were separated from whites by law in transportation, public accommodations, recreational facilities, churches, cemeteries, and schools in both Northern and Southern states.
In spite of the three Reconstruction Amendments passed after the Civil War to grant newly freed African Americans legal status and rights, between 1873 and 1883 the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that virtually nullified the work of Congress during Reconstruction. As many states sought to re-establish "white supremacy" in the 1870s, African Americans were disenfranchised and stripped of their newly won civil rights.
In the decades preceding the Civil War, Richard Humphreys, Samuel Powers Emlen Jr., and Prudence Crandall established schools for African Americans. In 1832, Crandall admitted an African American girl to her all-white Canterbury Female Boarding School in Connecticut, which resulted in public backlash and protests. She converted the school to one for only African American girls, but was jailed for violating a Black Law. Noyes Academy, an integrated school in New Hampshire founded by abolitionists in 1835, was attacked and destroyed by an anti-abolitionist mob.
The road to desegregated education in the United States was a long and difficult one. As early as the 1930s, members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) strategized to bring local lawsuits to court, arguing that separate was not equal and that every child, regardless of race, deserved a first-class education. In 1933, the NAACP undertook Hocutt v. Wilson, the first test case involving segregation in higher education. In 1946, the University of Texas Law School denied entry to Heman Sweatt, proposing a makeshift law school for him in the basement of a building near Prairie View University. In 1948, George McLaurin, a teacher, was admitted to the University of Oklahoma to pursue his doctorate but was segregated from white students. The Court's decisions in these cases weakened the structure of legalized segregation.
In 1954, the US Supreme Court unanimously outlawed state-sanctioned school segregation in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that segregation was inherently unequal and unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Despite this ruling, the vast majority of segregated schools were not integrated until many years later. School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the government became stricter on schools' plans to combat segregation more effectively. De jure segregation was outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
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Employment discrimination
The roots of racial inequality in American society run deep, with laws profoundly shaping, defining, and restricting the lives of Black people for over 400 years. While there have been legislative efforts to address racial discrimination, it remains a pervasive issue in the United States, including in employment.
Black Codes and Vagrancy Laws
Following the Civil War, Southern states passed a series of "Black Codes" that severely restricted the rights of Black people, including their economic opportunities. These laws, enacted between 1865 and 1866, imposed heavy legal penalties for vagrancy and restricted employment contracts. They also restricted the right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces. Vagrancy laws, which criminalized actions such as loitering and "rambling without a job," were frequently used to target Black individuals.
Civil Rights Act of 1866 and Beyond
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was a significant step towards addressing racial discrimination in employment. It declared that all persons born in the United States were citizens, regardless of race, colour, or previous condition. This act was followed by the establishment of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in the same year, which aimed to provide relief and employment to freed African Americans.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established in 1965 to enforce equal employment opportunity laws and address racial barriers in employment. EEOC works to stop and remedy racial discrimination in hiring, promotion, and harassment. For example, in EEOC vs. H2H Enterprises/Huddle House, the EEOC addressed a case of racial harassment where a company failed to address an African American employee's complaints about racially derogatory name-calling. Through litigation and voluntary agreements, EEOC has obtained compensation for victims and brought about changes in discriminatory practices.
Recent Reports of Workplace Discrimination
Despite legislative efforts, racial discrimination in employment remains prevalent. According to Gallup, one in four Black employees report experiencing discrimination at work in the past year, with younger Black workers experiencing higher rates of discrimination. This discrimination takes various forms, including offensive language and microaggressions, and can significantly impact the career trajectories and opportunities for Black employees.
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Frequently asked questions
The Black Codes were a series of laws passed by Southern state legislatures in the US after the Civil War to restrict the political franchise and economic opportunities of free Blacks. They included heavy legal penalties for vagrancy and restrictive employment contracts. The Black Codes also restricted Black people's right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces.
The Jim Crow laws were laws passed in the Southern United States to enforce racial segregation and curtail the power of Black voters. These laws officially segregated the country's population and were a manifestation of authoritarian rule specifically directed at one racial group.
Some key court cases include:
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): Ruled that racial segregation and Jim Crow laws were constitutional under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: Ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
- Loving v. Virginia (1967): Ruled anti-miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional.
- Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964): Upheld Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
