Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here too. So this
Speaker 1: is a real deal wing getting ding stuff you should
Speaker 1: know episode by goodness, By goodness, yeah, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: toss a bone to the churchy types that listened to us.
Speaker 1: Sure not take the Lord's name in vain for no
Speaker 1: good reason, by god, Wait a minute, sorry, I just
Speaker 1: messed it up. You undermined everything, and we have no
Speaker 1: way of getting rid of that, now, that's right, no
Speaker 1: edit function whatsoever. So uh, this was your pick the
Speaker 1: Black Codes, which I had heard the term before, but
Speaker 1: I did not know anything about. And as I was
Speaker 1: researching it, good pick, by the way, I think this
Speaker 1: is something that everybody should know about. UM. But as
Speaker 1: I was researching it, my my brain kept trying to
Speaker 1: like flesh it out further, flesh it out further, and
Speaker 1: like expand it. Um. And the Black Couds definitely touched
Speaker 1: a ton of other stuff. And you can make a
Speaker 1: lot of cases that they're still UM followed in some
Speaker 1: ways or at least mentally in America. UM. But they
Speaker 1: existed historically in such a narrow period of time that
Speaker 1: they basically came and went in about a year, which
Speaker 1: makes it astounding the impact that they had. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is uh our buddy Dave Ruse and how
Speaker 1: stuff works. And uh, I got a lot of good
Speaker 1: information from the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Yeah, that's a robust website. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Encyclopedia. I can't forget that it's made out
Speaker 1: of bark, That's right. But you're talking about the Black Codes,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, in short, I guess as a
Speaker 1: precursor definition, these were a series of laws that, like
Speaker 1: you said, weren't I mean, they kind of almost didn't
Speaker 1: even fully make it onto the books in some ways
Speaker 1: before they were taken off the books. But they were
Speaker 1: laws that Southern white people, notably and especially you know,
Speaker 1: plantation owners and and people that uh owned enslaved people
Speaker 1: came around and said, hey, you know what uh civil
Speaker 1: wars over and I know this emancipation proclamation has been
Speaker 1: around for a little bit where it hasn't quite gotten
Speaker 1: around everyone down here about that, and maybe we should
Speaker 1: just devise a series of laws that essentially re enslave
Speaker 1: these people. Uh. And you know, the only difference really
Speaker 1: will be that there will be some kind of wage involved. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was it. They were trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to read gain there agricultural society which had been built
Speaker 1: exclusively on the backs almost exclusively on the backs of
Speaker 1: enslaved people, free labor that you just had to pay
Speaker 1: to buy a person and then feed them and clothe
Speaker 1: them and house them. But like the labor was free,
Speaker 1: they had to figure out how to do that in
Speaker 1: the context of it being illegal to own people. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would to keep the status quo exactly, and that
Speaker 1: you know that it worth It's worth pointing out that
Speaker 1: the Northern corporations were fully on board with this plan
Speaker 1: because they didn't want any disruption to their supply chain
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, certainly cotton or anything that was
Speaker 1: built on the back of the labor of enslaved people
Speaker 1: that was being sent up north for manufacturing and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So they didn't want any work disruptions either. Um,
Speaker 1: the Northern citizens it was a bit of a different
Speaker 1: story in many cases, and we'll get into all that,
Speaker 1: but maybe we should start with the end of the
Speaker 1: Civil War. Okay, let's April eighteen sixty five. Uh, Civil
Speaker 1: War ends. Like we said before, the Emancipation Proclamation had
Speaker 1: been on the books for a couple of years. But um,
Speaker 1: certainly white southern plantation owners were not doing their best
Speaker 1: to get the word out that everything was different now
Speaker 1: and that these people were now freed. Um. They they
Speaker 1: wanted to keep that as you know, quiet as possible,
Speaker 1: which was pretty easy to do back then. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it was, Um there were things called slave codes, and
Speaker 1: one of the big slave codes is that it was
Speaker 1: illegal to teach a slave to read or write. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty easy to keep information out of the
Speaker 1: grape vine. Um, if you had a general population that
Speaker 1: that couldn't pick up a newspaper and read it, you know,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh So Lincoln and I'd never realized Lincoln
Speaker 1: was shot so soon after the war ended. It's really
Speaker 1: never I don't think it. It hit me that it
Speaker 1: was just five days later. It makes you wonder what
Speaker 1: could have happened. But yeah, it was really surprising that
Speaker 1: it happened that quick too. Yeah, So five days later,
Speaker 1: Lincoln has gone Vice President Andrew Johnson takes over and
Speaker 1: he is tasked with leading the reunification of uh, these
Speaker 1: United States he was a Southerner, very important, and one
Speaker 1: of the first things he did was say, you know what,
Speaker 1: why don't I just appoint a bunch of military governors
Speaker 1: for now and uh to these Confederate states so we
Speaker 1: can get everything kind of organized and get everything set up.
Speaker 1: And so one thing about Johnson was that he and
Speaker 1: actually Lincoln before him, favored kind of a forgiving plan
Speaker 1: for re entry of southern states that had succeeded back
Speaker 1: into the Union. And there was like a real kind
Speaker 1: of a light touch. I think one of the big
Speaker 1: factors was a ten percent plane where only ten percent
Speaker 1: of the population had to swear an oath of allegiance
Speaker 1: to the Union again um. And that that was a
Speaker 1: that that put it out. The Johnson plan at odds
Speaker 1: with with Congress, right, Um, George. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that Johnson did take up was this idea of
Speaker 1: a Freedman's Bureau, which is basically this idea, Okay, the
Speaker 1: South is ruined, we wrecked it, but it was already
Speaker 1: really backwards to begin with, and we want to modernize it.
Speaker 1: One of the things we have to do to modernize
Speaker 1: it is to take this group of new citizens that
Speaker 1: were it lived before, but they weren't considered citizens, and
Speaker 1: now we have to figure out a way to, um
Speaker 1: to get them integrated into the society of the South,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna set up the Freedman's Bureau to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking like including women and children, like four million people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is a lot of a lot of people
Speaker 1: to uh, I mean, I guess attempt to reintegrate into society.
Speaker 1: And the Freedman's Bureau did a few things. Um. They
Speaker 1: you know, they worked on wages to try and make
Speaker 1: sure that wages were fair. Uh. They tried to make
Speaker 1: sure that um, these men generally men could go find
Speaker 1: jobs if they wanted to and like choose who they
Speaker 1: wanted to work for. Uh. They had courts that they
Speaker 1: set up if you had a dispute with a wide employer, supposedly,
Speaker 1: these courts would be there to uh to at least
Speaker 1: hear your case. And while this is going on, the
Speaker 1: white Southerners were not so happy. They didn't like the
Speaker 1: Freedman's Bureau. They didn't like these new rules. They didn't
Speaker 1: like these military governors from the Union that were set up,
Speaker 1: even if temporary and they're temporarily and they were like,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta get this back under our control
Speaker 1: like quickly. Yeah, because the Freedman's Bureau was operated by
Speaker 1: the UM the military itself, so there was like no
Speaker 1: questioning this. It was an occupying force in the South
Speaker 1: basically saying this is how it's going to be, and
Speaker 1: we're here to make sure that that's how it goes down.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, and the white Southerners were not happy
Speaker 1: about that at all. But part of Johnson's plan, remember
Speaker 1: I said it had kind of a light touch, and
Speaker 1: it was based on a lot more forgiveness than punishment, UM,
Speaker 1: was that once you hit that ten percent mark where
Speaker 1: your population has taken an oath to the Union again,
Speaker 1: you could um ratify a new state constitution basically start over.
Speaker 1: And by the way, we're just gonna let white people
Speaker 1: be involved in these new states. That's what Johnson's take was,
Speaker 1: that that's how it should be. And so that's kind
Speaker 1: of how he decreed, and that was kind of the
Speaker 1: beginning of reconstructions called the Presidential Reconstruction, and so some
Speaker 1: of the Southern states are all the Southern states said
Speaker 1: about in eighteen sixty five creating new state constitutions yeah,
Speaker 1: and they you know, they were starting to get it
Speaker 1: together again, so they could kind of take back the
Speaker 1: reins of control themselves. Uh. There was a provisional governor
Speaker 1: in South Carolina that literally said this is a white
Speaker 1: man's government. And they held elections by the end of
Speaker 1: that year, um, all over the South. And as you
Speaker 1: would expect a lot of times, he's a Confederate leaders,
Speaker 1: former Confederate Confederate leaders one positions of power, if not governorship, um,
Speaker 1: you know, congress people. And we'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit more later. But they organized these state legislatures
Speaker 1: and uh, one of the things they did was said,
Speaker 1: all right, you know what, we need to really pull
Speaker 1: the South out of despairs to set up free schools, um,
Speaker 1: but for white people only. We're not gonna have black
Speaker 1: children in our schools, but we're gonna have free public
Speaker 1: education for everyone else. Yeah. So that was just right
Speaker 1: off the bat. The first time public education was introduced
Speaker 1: in the South, it was segregated, which set the stage
Speaker 1: for segregation throughout a lot of the twentieth century. The
Speaker 1: rest of the nineteenth century and there in a lot
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, right, and you'll start to notice,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the stuff that the South dealt
Speaker 1: with and tried to saddle on its black citizenry finds
Speaker 1: it's its origins in the black codes that were were
Speaker 1: written in these state Southern or Southern State Conventions of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five. They just popped up everywhere. This is
Speaker 1: where it all began. Yeah, I mean, it's really pretty despicable,
Speaker 1: Like the idea that these people were finally freed by
Speaker 1: law and they said, well, here, you know, let's just
Speaker 1: make a bunch of laws then, like remember the good
Speaker 1: old colonial times when uh we had all these laws. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's just do that again, so we can remain in power,
Speaker 1: we can keep our status quo going. And sure, we
Speaker 1: might have to pay some wages. Now I tried to
Speaker 1: look and find what wages might have been. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it was, you know, a pittance, but that was kind
Speaker 1: of the only thing they would acquiesce to. Otherwise they
Speaker 1: wanted it to look and feel and smell exactly like
Speaker 1: uh it did during the enslaved period. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: had to acquiesced to that because part of um, part
Speaker 1: of the requirements for returning to the Union as the
Speaker 1: state was to have abolition of slave and support abolition
Speaker 1: of slavery. And then also it was it was a
Speaker 1: there was a constitutional law now with the Thirteenth amend
Speaker 1: and said there's no more slavery in the United States.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter where you are, you can't enslave anybody.
Speaker 1: So they had to do that. But it's like you said,
Speaker 1: they figured out every mental gymnastic they could make to
Speaker 1: recreate the slave economy in this new context of people
Speaker 1: being free and you're not being allowed to have slaves anymore. Right,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good setup. Okay, it feels like
Speaker 1: a break time, I think so. Yeah, yeah, it does
Speaker 1: kind of feel that way. Do you feel that way?
Speaker 1: I feel it. I definitely feel it. Wait, I'm not
Speaker 1: feeling so much like a break now. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's keep going them. No, no no, no, okay, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: like came back. Okay, it came back. All right, We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. I wonder if we did
Speaker 1: that for like ten minutes, like a Family Guy episode,
Speaker 1: if people would just turn it off. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of them have already. Anyway, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Okay. So Christmas is approaching at the
Speaker 1: end of I guess what is that? And there were
Speaker 1: a couple of rumors floating around these different communities. One
Speaker 1: was in the black community. They were like, hey, I
Speaker 1: hear for Christmas, we're gonna get forty acres in a
Speaker 1: mule for every family on Christmas Day. And so let's
Speaker 1: not sign any work contracts or anything. Let's see what
Speaker 1: kind of happens here. We may be able to have
Speaker 1: our own farms and to work for ourselves and to
Speaker 1: be enterprising, uh families on our own. And the other
Speaker 1: rumor that was going around was in the white community
Speaker 1: in the South, which was, hey, they all think that
Speaker 1: they're going to get forty acres in the mule. This
Speaker 1: is not gonna happen. They may be giving out a
Speaker 1: little bit of land here and there, but this is
Speaker 1: definitely not happening. And when this goes down in Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a huge rebellion and it's going to
Speaker 1: be a big problem for us. And I was looking
Speaker 1: into that forty acres in a mule thing. Apparently it
Speaker 1: all came out of um William two Comps sherman Field
Speaker 1: Order number fifteen, where he basically said everything from Jacksonville
Speaker 1: to Charleston. Thirty miles inland is going to be set
Speaker 1: aside for newly freed slaves to basically own and live
Speaker 1: and work. And it was just meant to be this
Speaker 1: little area. It never was fulfilled. But somehow that got
Speaker 1: turned into among the black community in the South forty
Speaker 1: acres in a mule, which I had never heard before. Like,
Speaker 1: I just thought the government had always promised everybody forty
Speaker 1: acres in a mule. Yeah. I wasn't sure about the
Speaker 1: origins of that, and I knew that they were going
Speaker 1: to reappropriate some land, but um, yeah, I never knew
Speaker 1: that it was not an earnest sort of offer. Well.
Speaker 1: They also it was based on the idea that the
Speaker 1: North had confiscated tons of land from the Confederacy, and
Speaker 1: so they did think that they were going to redistribute
Speaker 1: it to newly freed black Americans. But apparently part of
Speaker 1: the Johnson plan was to give that land back to
Speaker 1: the original owners, and so that's how it got scuttled.
Speaker 1: That's right. So all this stuff is going on, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people scared on both sides. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of fear, uh, And this is kind of the
Speaker 1: background that's set up these Black codes UM mainly in
Speaker 1: Mississippi and South Carolina. So I saw there were there
Speaker 1: were black codes in other states. I know Texas had one,
Speaker 1: I believe North Carolina had one. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the Southern states. If they didn't actually enact them,
Speaker 1: then they were they had they had written them or
Speaker 1: drafted them, or trying to at least. But I think
Speaker 1: South Carolina and Mississippi's were maybe the most tanous of
Speaker 1: all of them. Yeah, I mean sure, that was my thing.
Speaker 1: Mississippi's was supposed to be even worked in South Carolina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was what I saw as well. Mississippi seems to
Speaker 1: be to have been the worst of the worst. But
Speaker 1: these codes fell into a um sort of a group
Speaker 1: of four or five different ways that they could restrict
Speaker 1: someone's rights through law, uh with with technically skirting the
Speaker 1: abolition amendments. And basically what they did is they figured
Speaker 1: out that if you wanted black people to work, because
Speaker 1: there was this idea that among Southerners, among white Southerners,
Speaker 1: I should say, that black people wouldn't work on their own.
Speaker 1: They had to be forced in to work through like slavery,
Speaker 1: or they had to be forced into work by some
Speaker 1: other new law, but if left to their own devices,
Speaker 1: they just wouldn't work and the economy would fall. So
Speaker 1: that was the idea at least. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was a pretext for just some deeply racist off
Speaker 1: or that was deeply racist, But if it was really
Speaker 1: just that was the kind of idea that was supporting
Speaker 1: like the moneyed class, and that idea trickled down into
Speaker 1: white society in the South. I'm not sure, but that
Speaker 1: was kind of like the premise that they were going
Speaker 1: on when they were writing these plaque codes, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to force black people into work agreements
Speaker 1: that benefited the white people they were working for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's even a little more despicable than you might
Speaker 1: think because they they also dressed it up with a
Speaker 1: few basic rights that you know, you see, you read stories,
Speaker 1: and you don't know how widespread it was. But even
Speaker 1: some of these basic rights I think many times weren't
Speaker 1: um enacted. Uh, they may have been on the books
Speaker 1: or at least offered on the books, but in order
Speaker 1: to um be a person of color back then, and
Speaker 1: to say like, hey, wait a minute, it says here
Speaker 1: that I can sue somebody, and I can acquire my
Speaker 1: own property and I can you know, enjoy the fruits
Speaker 1: of my own labor um. They have to be able to,
Speaker 1: you know, hire out an attorney and get it in
Speaker 1: front of a judge, and all these things were, you know,
Speaker 1: next to impossible basically, So even if they did dress
Speaker 1: it up a little bit with some basic rights, it
Speaker 1: was it was these weren't rights that were being enshrined,
Speaker 1: you know, right, or even if they were, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, thanks a lot for the most some of
Speaker 1: the most basic human rights that should be afforded to anybody,
Speaker 1: like recognizing our marriages as legitimate. Apparently, in the Annabellum South,
Speaker 1: black people were viewed as so subhuman that there they
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly marry one another in any kind of context
Speaker 1: that white people saw marriage and their children were all
Speaker 1: by definition than illegitimate. Well, in the super progressive post
Speaker 1: Civil War South, now their marriages were recognized as legal
Speaker 1: and their children were recognized as legitimate. How far have
Speaker 1: we come? Basically, the white Southerners were saying to themselves,
Speaker 1: as long as you married another black person, by the way,
Speaker 1: that was the other thing too, you said, you can
Speaker 1: sue um, you you all all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You could sue another black person, You still could not
Speaker 1: sue a white person. You couldn't, um have anything to
Speaker 1: do with the arrest of white person. The best you
Speaker 1: could hope for is to go down to a judge
Speaker 1: and fill out a complaint against a white person. Conversely, chuck,
Speaker 1: at least I believe in it might have been South
Speaker 1: Carolina or Mississippi. You, Um, if you were a white person,
Speaker 1: you could you could arrest any black person you wanted
Speaker 1: for even a misdemeanor, like any white person could arrest
Speaker 1: any black person. But a black person could only fill
Speaker 1: out a complaint against a white person in front of
Speaker 1: a judge right where it went into the circular file. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you probably were risking your health, well being, and
Speaker 1: possibly life by filing a complaint or filling out a
Speaker 1: complaint against a white person as a black person in
Speaker 1: the in the post Civil War South, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely another and you know, we'll talk about other civil
Speaker 1: rights that were violated along the way, or at least limited. Um.
Speaker 1: But another big way these black codes uh helped restrict
Speaker 1: you know, their freedoms ultimately was through something through these
Speaker 1: labor contracts. Uh. They basically said in South Carolina that
Speaker 1: if you want to work, then you will work as
Speaker 1: a servant. Um, we're not going to call you a
Speaker 1: slave anymore. You'll be a servant. Uh. And we're still
Speaker 1: gonna be called masters. And you have to sign this
Speaker 1: contract and uh, we will pay you a wage. It
Speaker 1: will all be in writing, has to be approved, but
Speaker 1: in witnessed by a judge. But here's the deal. You
Speaker 1: have to live in our property. You have to stay quiet,
Speaker 1: you can't get in the way. You have to work
Speaker 1: from sunrise to sunset except on Sunday. You can't leave,
Speaker 1: you can't go anywhere, you can't have visitors. And basically
Speaker 1: everyone looked around and said, well, what's the difference this
Speaker 1: small wage that we're being paid, and they said yes.
Speaker 1: Basically they're like, yeah, that's everything. That's the whole thing
Speaker 1: right there. And I also saw chuck in one place
Speaker 1: that the wages that were paid to these dow black
Speaker 1: servants who were formerly slaves were basically what the white
Speaker 1: plantation owners have been spending to feed and clothe and
Speaker 1: house their slaves. So for them, there was basically no
Speaker 1: no change in net gain or net output. It was
Speaker 1: just now they were directing that toward them, the black
Speaker 1: workers as wages instead. That's it. That was the only difference.
Speaker 1: And then wonder if they charged them rent. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I saw that in some cases they did have to
Speaker 1: house people who stayed on their land, but I think
Speaker 1: that they did, and they were allowed to charge them rent.
Speaker 1: They were also allowed to deduct from their wages for
Speaker 1: like time, um like all like, yes, there were I
Speaker 1: get the impression that there was a lot of ways
Speaker 1: that you could take back a lot of those wages
Speaker 1: that you paid somebody. One of the other ways that
Speaker 1: you could take back that money is through your local
Speaker 1: town store, which would um, which set up a system
Speaker 1: of what's called debt peonage, which is kind of like
Speaker 1: you know, the whole company store set up that miners
Speaker 1: in the North got into and like the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: you your little fifteen tons of cold, but you can't
Speaker 1: go to heaven because you know, your soul of the
Speaker 1: company store. Kind of thing that found its root in
Speaker 1: the South in around eighteen sixty five, where if you
Speaker 1: were in this labor contract, you could go to local
Speaker 1: store and offer half of your crops as like UM
Speaker 1: capital and then start borrowing. And so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: people who had been enslave before and could have nothing
Speaker 1: now had free credit at the local store. And when
Speaker 1: the when the credit was called in at the end
Speaker 1: of the season, when they harvested their crops, they frequently
Speaker 1: found not only were all their crops taken, but like
Speaker 1: all the stuff they had bought was being called back
Speaker 1: in and was taken to to cover their debts, like
Speaker 1: because of huge crazy interest rates involved. So they were
Speaker 1: trapped in this cycle where once they entered and they
Speaker 1: had to chuck you said it yourself. They had to
Speaker 1: engage in these labor contracts. Once they entered them, they
Speaker 1: did not get back out, and all of the advantage
Speaker 1: was towards the white the white plantation owners and the
Speaker 1: white store owners. They're also allowed to whip anyone under eighteen,
Speaker 1: any servants under eighteen, and if it was someone over eighteen,
Speaker 1: you could get a judge's permission basically to whip somebody.
Speaker 1: Um if they you know, if it got just so
Speaker 1: bad that they said, you know, I can't even I
Speaker 1: can't do this, I'm quitting this job, I'm breaking this contract.
Speaker 1: Then they were basically like all right, well, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get paid anything. Then they could uh take back
Speaker 1: their wages and they were essentially forfeited, and they could
Speaker 1: be arrested, and the judge could say, no, you're going
Speaker 1: rap back to where you came from because, uh, you
Speaker 1: broke a contract, and it's it's just risk end as
Speaker 1: you know, an enslaved person escaping and being returned to
Speaker 1: their master. Right, So you would say, okay, well how
Speaker 1: about you just don't work? Like there's your answer right there.
Speaker 1: They could just say I'm not gonna work. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: just hang around and try, uh try my luck. Just
Speaker 1: hanging out like it would make a lot more sense
Speaker 1: than ending up in debt and having to work for
Speaker 1: you know, my former plantation owner. And that they had
Speaker 1: that figured out too as part of the black Coats chuck.
Speaker 1: If you were uh caught without a labor contract, you
Speaker 1: could be arrested unemployed from did not have a job.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. So they, yes, they figured out how
Speaker 1: to force black people into work by saying it's illegal
Speaker 1: for you to not have a job. And the big
Speaker 1: horrible irony of the whole thing is if you were
Speaker 1: arrested for what they called vagrancy. You would go to jail.
Speaker 1: They would say, you owe us this huge exorbitant debt.
Speaker 1: Is there any white plantation owner who would like to
Speaker 1: come pay this debt? A plantation order would come along,
Speaker 1: pay the debt and say you now belong to me
Speaker 1: because your debt was just transferred to me, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to put you to work until you pay off
Speaker 1: this high exorbitant debt. And you're going to be stuck
Speaker 1: in that same cycle as you would have been if
Speaker 1: you just engaged in the labor contract to begin with
Speaker 1: and not been arrested for vagrancy. Right, or they could say, well, actually,
Speaker 1: your honor, I I learned quite a bit about carpentry
Speaker 1: or or smith ing. I'm a great smithy. Didn't we
Speaker 1: learn that what they were not called smithy z they
Speaker 1: have to be though forever it's just too great a word,
Speaker 1: you know. Like I'm a cobbler, Like I really have
Speaker 1: a lot of talent, so I'd like to open up
Speaker 1: my own shop. And I think I can do this.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of driving initiative. And the judge
Speaker 1: would say no, no no, no, I'm sorry, I don't think
Speaker 1: you understand you have to work if you want to work,
Speaker 1: you have to sign a work contract and work for
Speaker 1: a white person. You can't open up your own business,
Speaker 1: and or you're a vagrant. And then they would say, well,
Speaker 1: what about those white guys over there, they don't have jobs,
Speaker 1: And they said, well, but they're allowed to sign oaths
Speaker 1: of poverty to get out of jail, so well, can
Speaker 1: we do that? No, you can't do that. So it's
Speaker 1: essentially just two separate systems set up from the beginning
Speaker 1: with these black codes, two separate groups of laws depending
Speaker 1: on your skin color and chuck. One of the other
Speaker 1: UM owners parts about this is they're like, oh, if
Speaker 1: you're a minor, you don't escape this either. Like there's
Speaker 1: something now called apprenticeships, which is basically like vagrancy laws
Speaker 1: for kids and um you can be put to work
Speaker 1: as an apprentice and you don't even have to be paid.
Speaker 1: If you're under eighteen for a woman or under twenty
Speaker 1: one for a man, you can be apprenticed out to somebody.
Speaker 1: An apprentice can be like, you're still a field worker.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you're actually learning a trade, although some
Speaker 1: places did specify they did have to have to be
Speaker 1: taught a trade and fed and clothed, and for all
Speaker 1: intents and purposes, you were an enslaved person just as
Speaker 1: much as you were before because you weren't being paid
Speaker 1: for the labor you were now being forced to do well.
Speaker 1: And they could I think they could even take the
Speaker 1: kids and just say, I'm sorry you your parents are negligent,
Speaker 1: and so we're gonna take you in and a print
Speaker 1: it and put you in our apprenticeship. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think they probably even call it a program that
Speaker 1: gives it a little too much value. But they said,
Speaker 1: you know, sorry, your parents are negligent. We can take you. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have to work for me if you're a young
Speaker 1: man until you're twenty one, or if you're a young
Speaker 1: woman until you're eighteen. And um, that's the you know
Speaker 1: it's there's a man called what was this? I know
Speaker 1: his last name was Blackman. He wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Slavery by another name that had a lot to do
Speaker 1: with this, And there was one story in here about
Speaker 1: a gentleman named green Cottenham. This is a nineteen o eight,
Speaker 1: mind you, this is way way way later. He was
Speaker 1: arrested for vagrancy in Alabama in nineteen o eight, auctioned
Speaker 1: off to us deal where they chained him to Uh,
Speaker 1: they chained him up, put him in a coal mine
Speaker 1: in Birmingham and said, all right, this is your new life. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have to do this until you're fine. Is repaid.
Speaker 1: Um if he you know, if he collapsed, he was whipped.
Speaker 1: If he died, he would be buried in a pauper's
Speaker 1: grave with everyone else. And I think out of the
Speaker 1: thousand black men who are working for U. S. Steel
Speaker 1: in less than one year, sixty of them died from homicide,
Speaker 1: accidents or disease. So this was a yeah, the North's
Speaker 1: hands aren't clean about this, and and that was something
Speaker 1: that like you know, the North frequently gets gets a
Speaker 1: pass on on that um, especially among just kind of
Speaker 1: like the white view of history that it was all
Speaker 1: the South's fault that reconstruction failed, um, that the South
Speaker 1: was um unwilling to kind of progress forward and accept
Speaker 1: black people into society. That was definitely true, but they
Speaker 1: were aided in some ways by the North, and the
Speaker 1: North definitely was engaged in some of these unsavory practices
Speaker 1: as well. I think that's definitely worth pointing out. So
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about different laws depending on
Speaker 1: your skin color. Uh. This wasn't just like a subjective opinion,
Speaker 1: like they literally did this with their courts. Uh. They
Speaker 1: did have um certain new technically certain new freedoms for court.
Speaker 1: Like we talked about suing someone but could only be
Speaker 1: another person of color. Uh, you could be a plantiff
Speaker 1: for a defendant, but only in cases. Uh. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess a plaintiff only in cases where there was another
Speaker 1: person of color involved. And the penalties were way different.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of the times you get the
Speaker 1: death penalty if you were black, you would for the
Speaker 1: literally the same crime, you would not get that penalty
Speaker 1: if you were white. And even minor offenses, like the
Speaker 1: smallest things you could imagine that you would be brought
Speaker 1: in for Um, you would to be hired out and worked,
Speaker 1: uh you know, twelve fourteen hours a day, or you
Speaker 1: were whipped right. And so the idea was that they
Speaker 1: were making it basically illegal to be black, um. And
Speaker 1: they made it illegal to be unemployed. And they set
Speaker 1: up a system so that everybody, all black people, newly
Speaker 1: freed black people in the South were funneled into this
Speaker 1: economic system that favored white people and tried to recreate
Speaker 1: slavery as best as possible, right, And one of the
Speaker 1: ways that they got away with this, one of the
Speaker 1: ways around this that was um that really kind of
Speaker 1: brought jail into the forefront of this initiative to recreate
Speaker 1: the slave economy in the South, was actually found and
Speaker 1: is still found in the thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
Speaker 1: That the amendment that abolished slavery. It said, you can't
Speaker 1: enslave anybody anywhere in the United States, except unless as
Speaker 1: a punishment for a crime, whereof the party shall have
Speaker 1: been duly convicted. There is a loophole in the Amendment
Speaker 1: to the Constitution that abolishes slavery and says that if
Speaker 1: you've been convicted of a crime, you can be used
Speaker 1: as a slave as punishment for that crime. And that
Speaker 1: really got the attention of the Southern legislatures after the
Speaker 1: Civil War, and they said, okay, all right, well, then
Speaker 1: how about we just start arresting black people on mass
Speaker 1: And that's what drove that whole illegalization of being black
Speaker 1: in the South. Uh, that was written into the Black cones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, that's why they did the vagrancy laws,
Speaker 1: that's why they did the apprenticeship laws. It all was
Speaker 1: just sitting there in front of their face with this
Speaker 1: massive loophole, and it was still allowed to happen, um
Speaker 1: well to a to a certain degree, which we'll get
Speaker 1: to in a sec. Well, there's one good example. Let's
Speaker 1: give him the example of the pig laws real quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pig laws were uh, certainly in other places, but definitely
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. I found where they they basically tried to
Speaker 1: make any crime that it might be more likely that
Speaker 1: a black person might commit way way more prosecutable, um
Speaker 1: like grand larceny went from twenty five dollars to like
Speaker 1: ten dollars. And the big one, which is why they
Speaker 1: call them pig laws, was any farm animal that was stolen.
Speaker 1: And these could you know a farm animal could have
Speaker 1: a value of like a dollar or less. Uh, They said,
Speaker 1: that is also grand larceny because they knew that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, formally, en slave person might be more likely
Speaker 1: to steal the chicken for dinner so they could eat
Speaker 1: and survive, and make that a literal grand larceny offense.
Speaker 1: Right like grand larceny published punishable by five years in jail,
Speaker 1: during which time you could be leased out by the
Speaker 1: state to work for peanuts on a plantation. Um for
Speaker 1: a white business owner. That was the setup. The sad
Speaker 1: thing is is a lot of people today, a lot
Speaker 1: of social and his storical critics say, yeah, it's still
Speaker 1: going on. That loophole is still there, and there's still
Speaker 1: a lot of slave labor being used. And even if
Speaker 1: you're not being if you're not not being paid for
Speaker 1: that labor, you're being paid so little, um that you
Speaker 1: might as well be a slave. I think there was
Speaker 1: the most recent sentences. It was in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: the most recent prison labor sensors. They found one point
Speaker 1: five million prisoners were working, six thousand of which we're
Speaker 1: working in the manufacturing center. Most of them were making
Speaker 1: two dollars or less a day if they were being
Speaker 1: paid at all. Geez and Chuck, um, I know, you know,
Speaker 1: there's awesome documentary on Netflix about the thirteenth Amendment and
Speaker 1: the implications it has. Just it's called and it is
Speaker 1: a It's one of those documentaries it's like life changing
Speaker 1: after you watch it. It's I encourage everybody to go
Speaker 1: watch that documentary. It's just that good. Right. Should we
Speaker 1: take a break, Yes, all right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So Chuck after the Civil War rands the Union says, Okay,
Speaker 1: Southern States, come back, come back, go right, your your
Speaker 1: your new state constitutions, show them to us, and let's
Speaker 1: see what you got. And the Southern states went off
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five and held their all white conventions
Speaker 1: and wrote their new all white laws. Actually they're all
Speaker 1: black laws, I should say. And they came back to
Speaker 1: the Congress of the United States and said, okay, first,
Speaker 1: let us just explain before you make any judgments. And
Speaker 1: and uh, the Congress was not at all amused by this.
Speaker 1: It was not very surprising. But there was a huge
Speaker 1: um swath of Congress called the Radical Republicans, who were
Speaker 1: they wanted the South punished. They were deeply offended that
Speaker 1: the South had taken up arms against the nation. Um.
Speaker 1: They hated slavery, they thought it was disgusting. They thought
Speaker 1: the South was backwards and it needed to be modernized.
Speaker 1: And they were not in any kind of particular mood
Speaker 1: for allowing concessions for racist slave owners trying to recreate
Speaker 1: the slave economy. And it it brought Congress crashing down
Speaker 1: upon the South in the form of reconstruction. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: they basically said you know what, We're not gonna seat
Speaker 1: anyone you elect to Congress. Uh, we are not going
Speaker 1: to we're gonna invalidate any of these laws that you're
Speaker 1: putting on the books. And some of the Southern states
Speaker 1: said uh to themselves, like, oh, like, I think I
Speaker 1: see the writing on the wall. This is really bad.
Speaker 1: And if we want to have any kind of agency
Speaker 1: of self rule, we might need to walk back some
Speaker 1: of these black codes a little bit because it's clear
Speaker 1: that they're not um, they're not hip to what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do here at all. Right, they saw through it.
Speaker 1: I don't know how, but they saw through our motives
Speaker 1: and so we're just trying to recreate slavery. So even
Speaker 1: though they had Johnson in office, they were like, we
Speaker 1: have one of our own as president. Um, he was
Speaker 1: vetoed by Congress, and it was essentially kind of a
Speaker 1: hostile Congress towards Johnson and the South. Yeah, Johnson was
Speaker 1: the first president to be impeached, and he was saved
Speaker 1: from conviction in the Senate by just one vote. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't over him being a racist, but he definitely
Speaker 1: was a racist. He even said he vetoed the civil
Speaker 1: rights Act of eighteen sixty six, which basically said black
Speaker 1: people are citizens now, and this is what they deserve,
Speaker 1: just like any other citizen. And Johnson said, well, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: We've never done anything even remotely like this for white citizens,
Speaker 1: why should we do it for black citizens? And like
Speaker 1: his veto even was syst um, and he and basically
Speaker 1: everybody who wasn't on board with the Radical Republicans viewpoint
Speaker 1: missed the idea that the newly freed, formerly enslaved black
Speaker 1: citizens that were now citizens of the United States needed
Speaker 1: a leg up to get on some sort of equal
Speaker 1: footing with white people to be integrated in society. That
Speaker 1: it would be a good idea for everybody to be
Speaker 1: on fairly equal footing so that society could move forward faster.
Speaker 1: And to do that the people who in the economy, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: and to do that, the people who used to be
Speaker 1: slaves needed a little bit of a leg up because
Speaker 1: they've been kind of held back for four hundred years
Speaker 1: at that point, or a couple hundred years at that point. Um.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of the premise that the Radical
Speaker 1: Republicans were basing all this on, and all of the
Speaker 1: Conservatives were saying no, this is this is too much,
Speaker 1: it's too fast, it's too radical, Um, this is this
Speaker 1: is a problem now, And the the Southern States started
Speaker 1: to kind of get the sympathy of some Northern conservatives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they it's not like they were talked into
Speaker 1: racist attitudes, but they were kind of talked into like, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what's gonna happen if these freedmen start holding
Speaker 1: office and they start getting in positions of power, is
Speaker 1: you know, they're people don't want to work, so they're
Speaker 1: gonna get laws passed that basically see to the fact
Speaker 1: that they don't have to work and they can just
Speaker 1: live off of us, and we don't want them to
Speaker 1: get in Like I think in eighteen sixty seven, a
Speaker 1: couple of years after the initial proposition proposition of these
Speaker 1: black codes is the first time that these uh freedmen
Speaker 1: actually participated and voted in elections. And these white Southerners
Speaker 1: essentially kind of put the fear of God into these Northerners, saying,
Speaker 1: you see what's coming, right, and they kind of fell
Speaker 1: for it. They did fall for it. There's a really
Speaker 1: excellent article that I would dig everybody go read on
Speaker 1: Jacobin Um uh dot com. It's called Killing Reconstruction by
Speaker 1: Heather Cox Richardson, and she basically lays out how the
Speaker 1: South said, Okay, all of our racist views are following
Speaker 1: on deaf ears up north. They don't really like the
Speaker 1: racism thing. What else could we do? And somebody said,
Speaker 1: what about classism? And they said, oh yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of rich people up in the North. They're gonna
Speaker 1: love our classist argument. And so what they said is
Speaker 1: exactly what you were saying. That if you let these
Speaker 1: people who haven't haven't ever earned anything in their life
Speaker 1: get elected to office, they're gonna get ahold of all
Speaker 1: this taxpayer money and they're gonna redistribute wealth. They're gonna
Speaker 1: take hard earned white wealth and redistribute it to lazy,
Speaker 1: shiftless former black slaves. And do you really want that?
Speaker 1: And by the way, it has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: being black. If you let any worker do that, if
Speaker 1: you let any worker vote, any worker get into office,
Speaker 1: they're going to redistribute wealth. And even today, uh, Heather
Speaker 1: Cox richards And make a really great connection to today
Speaker 1: where if you if we talk about an activist government,
Speaker 1: a government that says we're here to really help raise
Speaker 1: the well being of everybody. People say activist government and
Speaker 1: they want to redistribute wealth, and it's probably either run
Speaker 1: by or being run for the benefit of people of color.
Speaker 1: That's still that whole idea still goes on today, and
Speaker 1: it finds its roots in the post Civil War reconstruction South,
Speaker 1: where the Southerners finally got the ear and the sympathies
Speaker 1: of the Northerners by shifting the focus from racism to classism. Well,
Speaker 1: they they scared them financially, there is going to hit
Speaker 1: your pocketbook, and that really pricked up their ears at
Speaker 1: that point. It did, and so people say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: reconstruction was abandoned, and that's exactly right. It was an
Speaker 1: astounding project. From eighteen seventy three different constitutional amendments were introduced,
Speaker 1: past and ratified that ended slavery, that A created due
Speaker 1: process of law, and that UM gave black men the
Speaker 1: right to vote. Within five years, there was like it
Speaker 1: was very promising. Black people were running and being elected
Speaker 1: to Southern UM, Southern town councils, state legislators, judge ships,
Speaker 1: like things were happening. But then when the North kind
Speaker 1: of lost interest or lost its initiative to keep going.
Speaker 1: It just fell apart, and the North definitely turned its
Speaker 1: back on black Southern Americans and left them out high
Speaker 1: and dry and opened the door for Jim crow Loss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like this guy's I mean, I'm from the South,
Speaker 1: but you lived here quite a while. Like I feel
Speaker 1: like we're always saying, hey, listen, it was a problem
Speaker 1: all over the place everybody, And it's true, but this
Speaker 1: is I don't know, it's hard to sort of break
Speaker 1: the I mean, the stereotype is there for a reason
Speaker 1: in the South obviously, but definitely I think there were
Speaker 1: just so many comes as it um corporations and and
Speaker 1: rich white Northerners that uh, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: bring that up. Well, the KKK sucked a lot of
Speaker 1: the oxygen down towards the South as far as blame goes,
Speaker 1: because they definitely did engage in a terror campaign to
Speaker 1: like get black people out of politics and out of
Speaker 1: like the idea that they should be participating in society.
Speaker 1: And then even when black people went ahead and did
Speaker 1: it and the KKK wasn't around, just northern normal white
Speaker 1: townspeople would riot and like kill like black office holders
Speaker 1: and to keep the status quo going. So I mean
Speaker 1: like it was. It was when the North left it.
Speaker 1: They just completely left black Southerners out to dry, like
Speaker 1: in one of the biggest betrayals. It's it's ever taken
Speaker 1: place in the history of this country. Yeah, I mean there,
Speaker 1: it definitely. I know that that nimby is sort of
Speaker 1: a modern internet phrase. Have you heard of that? No,
Speaker 1: not in my backyard. Oh yeah, yeah, I've heard that.
Speaker 1: I've never heard the acronym there. Yeah. Now, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know how it is these days, everything is just shortened,
Speaker 1: so now you just say nimby on social media. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of nimbi nimbiness going on back then
Speaker 1: for sure. For sure, and the idea that oh it's
Speaker 1: not because they're black, it's because they're poor workers. We
Speaker 1: can't give poorer workers rights. That it made it a
Speaker 1: lot more palatable for northerns to kind of take part
Speaker 1: and feel okay about themselves with that. That's right. So
Speaker 1: again we just want to say what we were talking about,
Speaker 1: these black codes and the two types of reconstruction. We're
Speaker 1: talking about like a one to fifteen year period in
Speaker 1: American history, but it's one of the periods that has
Speaker 1: some of the farthest reaching repercussions that are still around today. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's just astounding to me like that that it
Speaker 1: went from slave codes to black codes to Jim Crow
Speaker 1: laws and then finally the Civil Rights era got America
Speaker 1: to say on paper, we're not racist any longer, which
Speaker 1: is where a lot of people end it. But those
Speaker 1: are the same people that point to the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: are and say, see, America is not racist anymore, which
Speaker 1: is probably the gas lighting is gas lighting you could
Speaker 1: possibly experience in America today if you ask me, that's right.
Speaker 1: And hey, if we're recommending documentaries along these lines, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna recommend the HBO four part documentary Exterminate All the Roots.
Speaker 1: Have you seen that one? No, it's great, it's uh.
Speaker 1: It's made and narrated by Raoul Peck, and it is
Speaker 1: a four part series that basically draws the line from
Speaker 1: the very beginning, like the very first uh efforts at
Speaker 1: colonization and gen and genocide by the Spanish, you know, however,
Speaker 1: many hundreds of years ago that was, and they draw
Speaker 1: he's he he basically kind of covers colonization in genocide
Speaker 1: over the years throughout history. But the way he draws
Speaker 1: direct straight lines from then to now and what we're
Speaker 1: looking at now in America and all over the world
Speaker 1: is really impactful. It's hard to describe how like some
Speaker 1: of it is uh, straight up documentary. Some of it
Speaker 1: is recreations, but like really really good historical recreations while
Speaker 1: he's narrating, and he just uses amazing graphics to illustrate
Speaker 1: to really hit home a lot of stuff. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like going to school. It is super dense and
Speaker 1: and hetty, but I really, if you got four hours
Speaker 1: to kill exterminate all the brutes is great. Yeah. That's
Speaker 1: what kept coming up for me when we were researching
Speaker 1: Black codes. I was like, oh, that's still going on today.
Speaker 1: Oh that's still how a lot of white people think
Speaker 1: about black people today. Um, It's just it's nuts, Like,
Speaker 1: how how much of a society, our society is still
Speaker 1: just kind of predicated on these these terrible impressions. You
Speaker 1: know that we're created and per perpetuated by the Southern
Speaker 1: planting planner class. Yeah, and that's why it's super frustrating
Speaker 1: when anyone ever says like, oh, this is an eric
Speaker 1: everyone just has an equal shot in this country. I
Speaker 1: don't want to hear anything else. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: can't even you know, it's hard to even head of
Speaker 1: a discussion with someone who says something like that, I
Speaker 1: know what you mean. Jim Crow was not that long ago. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. We'll keep chipping away at it, huh yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll, I mean, Jim Crow has sort of
Speaker 1: been something we wanted to cover for a long time. Um, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you want to know more about
Speaker 1: Black Codes, there's a lot of ink that's been written
Speaker 1: about it, and it is all really good and interesting
Speaker 1: and eye opening, and you should probably spend a little
Speaker 1: more time researching it. And since I said that it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this just
Speaker 1: a letter of thanks from one of our oldest, uh
Speaker 1: you know, most long time listeners. I think Ian Clarkson
Speaker 1: has been listening for a while. Enjoyed Into the World,
Speaker 1: was a movie crusher when that was around, And uh,
Speaker 1: this is from Ian and Ian legit freaked out that
Speaker 1: I'm reading this so good it always makes me happy
Speaker 1: for sure. Howdy from Dallas, guys. I wanted to reach
Speaker 1: out and just begin by saying thank you, for all
Speaker 1: the joyful content you provide the world during the gloomy
Speaker 1: time of covid UH and adolescence, I really needed a
Speaker 1: boost that y'all provided. I've listened since I was seventeen.
Speaker 1: Now I'm twenty five, and abe Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: is my classroom long since I've exited school. Josh drove
Speaker 1: me to get my archaeology minor, and Chuck is uh.
Speaker 1: I know how about that? And Chuck has given me
Speaker 1: and my family endless amounts of movies and nights of joy.
Speaker 1: We outsourced a lot of our movie picking to Chuck. Actually,
Speaker 1: all of you are wonderful humans, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: to reach out and express my pure joy that I
Speaker 1: received from Stuff you Should Know. I can't I think
Speaker 1: all enough for being so insightful and kind with what
Speaker 1: you create. Hope to one day be able to share
Speaker 1: your catalog with my kids. I've written in once before
Speaker 1: when I was in high school too, but I thought
Speaker 1: i'd reach out again. Both of you remind my parents
Speaker 1: of Click and clack. We've gotten that from a bunch
Speaker 1: of people. That's the highest praise you can get anyway. Hope,
Speaker 1: Hope pull as well. This if you should know podcast
Speaker 1: Office and that you're all enjoying you're descent into the holidays.
Speaker 1: Your loyal fan, Ian Clarkson. Ian is a great dude.
Speaker 1: That was a fantastic email. Ian, thanks a lot for
Speaker 1: that and hello from us. That's right, Hardy. Hello, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us like
Speaker 1: Ian did, you can send us an email to wrap
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