WEBVTT - What were the black codes? 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.520 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.640 and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here too. So this 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:19.880 is a real deal wing getting ding stuff you should 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:25.720 know episode by goodness, By goodness, yeah, I'm trying to 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.120 toss a bone to the churchy types that listened to us. 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.480 Sure not take the Lord's name in vain for no 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:35.760 good reason, by god, Wait a minute, sorry, I just 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.960 messed it up. You undermined everything, and we have no 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:42.640 way of getting rid of that, now, that's right, no 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:49.920 edit function whatsoever. So uh, this was your pick the 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:54.360 Black Codes, which I had heard the term before, but 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:58.240 I did not know anything about. And as I was 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:00.840 researching it, good pick, by the way, I think this 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:04.200 is something that everybody should know about. UM. But as 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.399 I was researching it, my my brain kept trying to 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:09.680 like flesh it out further, flesh it out further, and 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:13.560 like expand it. Um. And the Black Couds definitely touched 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:15.560 a ton of other stuff. And you can make a 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:22.399 lot of cases that they're still UM followed in some 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:27.760 ways or at least mentally in America. UM. But they 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:32.880 existed historically in such a narrow period of time that 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:36.280 they basically came and went in about a year, which 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:40.920 makes it astounding the impact that they had. You know. Yeah, 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.679 and this is uh our buddy Dave Ruse and how 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:47.400 stuff works. And uh, I got a lot of good 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:54.360 information from the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Yeah, that's a robust website. Yeah, 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:58.840 the Mississippi Encyclopedia. I can't forget that it's made out 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:04.200 of bark, That's right. But you're talking about the Black Codes, 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:07.840 and uh, you know, in short, I guess as a 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:12.080 precursor definition, these were a series of laws that, like 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.840 you said, weren't I mean, they kind of almost didn't 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:16.919 even fully make it onto the books in some ways 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.080 before they were taken off the books. But they were 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:26.680 laws that Southern white people, notably and especially you know, 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:30.880 plantation owners and and people that uh owned enslaved people 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:33.800 came around and said, hey, you know what uh civil 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.320 wars over and I know this emancipation proclamation has been 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.480 around for a little bit where it hasn't quite gotten 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:41.880 around everyone down here about that, and maybe we should 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:47.480 just devise a series of laws that essentially re enslave 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.560 these people. Uh. And you know, the only difference really 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:55.959 will be that there will be some kind of wage involved. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:58.280 that was it. They were trying to figure out how 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:05.400 to read gain there agricultural society which had been built 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:10.320 exclusively on the backs almost exclusively on the backs of 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:15.040 enslaved people, free labor that you just had to pay 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:18.600 to buy a person and then feed them and clothe 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.880 them and house them. But like the labor was free, 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:23.520 they had to figure out how to do that in 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:29.200 the context of it being illegal to own people. Now, Yeah, 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.160 they would to keep the status quo exactly, and that 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:34.160 you know that it worth It's worth pointing out that 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.640 the Northern corporations were fully on board with this plan 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:41.000 because they didn't want any disruption to their supply chain 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:46.400 of uh, you know, certainly cotton or anything that was 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:49.320 built on the back of the labor of enslaved people 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:51.600 that was being sent up north for manufacturing and stuff 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:56.200 like that. So they didn't want any work disruptions either. Um, 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:58.840 the Northern citizens it was a bit of a different 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.680 story in many cases, and we'll get into all that, 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:04.360 but maybe we should start with the end of the 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:10.560 Civil War. Okay, let's April eighteen sixty five. Uh, Civil 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:14.839 War ends. Like we said before, the Emancipation Proclamation had 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:18.240 been on the books for a couple of years. But um, 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:22.120 certainly white southern plantation owners were not doing their best 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:26.039 to get the word out that everything was different now 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.200 and that these people were now freed. Um. They they 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:32.440 wanted to keep that as you know, quiet as possible, 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:35.599 which was pretty easy to do back then. Yeah, because 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.359 it was, Um there were things called slave codes, and 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:40.000 one of the big slave codes is that it was 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:44.440 illegal to teach a slave to read or write. So yeah, 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:46.680 it was pretty easy to keep information out of the 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:50.120 grape vine. Um, if you had a general population that 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:52.279 that couldn't pick up a newspaper and read it, you know, 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:56.080 that's right. Uh So Lincoln and I'd never realized Lincoln 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.719 was shot so soon after the war ended. It's really 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:01.159 never I don't think it. It hit me that it 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:03.640 was just five days later. It makes you wonder what 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:06.960 could have happened. But yeah, it was really surprising that 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.920 it happened that quick too. Yeah, So five days later, 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.920 Lincoln has gone Vice President Andrew Johnson takes over and 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:19.400 he is tasked with leading the reunification of uh, these 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:22.600 United States he was a Southerner, very important, and one 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:24.279 of the first things he did was say, you know what, 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:27.760 why don't I just appoint a bunch of military governors 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:32.840 for now and uh to these Confederate states so we 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.240 can get everything kind of organized and get everything set up. 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:39.160 And so one thing about Johnson was that he and 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:44.839 actually Lincoln before him, favored kind of a forgiving plan 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.360 for re entry of southern states that had succeeded back 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:52.320 into the Union. And there was like a real kind 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:54.760 of a light touch. I think one of the big 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:57.599 factors was a ten percent plane where only ten percent 0:05:57.640 --> 0:05:59.919 of the population had to swear an oath of allegiance 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.600 to the Union again um. And that that was a 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.960 that that put it out. The Johnson plan at odds 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:11.480 with with Congress, right, Um, George. But one of the 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.400 things that Johnson did take up was this idea of 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.360 a Freedman's Bureau, which is basically this idea, Okay, the 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:20.599 South is ruined, we wrecked it, but it was already 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.200 really backwards to begin with, and we want to modernize it. 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:25.440 One of the things we have to do to modernize 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.760 it is to take this group of new citizens that 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:31.839 were it lived before, but they weren't considered citizens, and 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:33.919 now we have to figure out a way to, um 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.119 to get them integrated into the society of the South, 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:40.600 and we're gonna set up the Freedman's Bureau to do that. Yeah, 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:44.799 we're talking like including women and children, like four million people. Yeah, 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:47.279 so this is a lot of a lot of people 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:51.680 to uh, I mean, I guess attempt to reintegrate into society. 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:56.560 And the Freedman's Bureau did a few things. Um. They 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:58.360 you know, they worked on wages to try and make 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.200 sure that wages were fair. Uh. They tried to make 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:05.280 sure that um, these men generally men could go find 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:07.320 jobs if they wanted to and like choose who they 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.240 wanted to work for. Uh. They had courts that they 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:14.160 set up if you had a dispute with a wide employer, supposedly, 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.160 these courts would be there to uh to at least 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.400 hear your case. And while this is going on, the 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:23.320 white Southerners were not so happy. They didn't like the 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.360 Freedman's Bureau. They didn't like these new rules. They didn't 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.400 like these military governors from the Union that were set up, 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.560 even if temporary and they're temporarily and they were like, 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.400 we gotta we gotta get this back under our control 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:40.480 like quickly. Yeah, because the Freedman's Bureau was operated by 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:45.040 the UM the military itself, so there was like no 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:48.320 questioning this. It was an occupying force in the South 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:50.200 basically saying this is how it's going to be, and 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:52.720 we're here to make sure that that's how it goes down. 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:55.720 Um and yeah, and the white Southerners were not happy 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:59.280 about that at all. But part of Johnson's plan, remember 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:01.080 I said it had kind of a light touch, and 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:05.760 it was based on a lot more forgiveness than punishment, UM, 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.640 was that once you hit that ten percent mark where 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:10.800 your population has taken an oath to the Union again, 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:17.200 you could um ratify a new state constitution basically start over. 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.360 And by the way, we're just gonna let white people 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:25.160 be involved in these new states. That's what Johnson's take was, 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:27.120 that that's how it should be. And so that's kind 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.440 of how he decreed, and that was kind of the 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:35.000 beginning of reconstructions called the Presidential Reconstruction, and so some 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.240 of the Southern states are all the Southern states said 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:43.800 about in eighteen sixty five creating new state constitutions yeah, 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:46.000 and they you know, they were starting to get it 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:48.400 together again, so they could kind of take back the 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:52.320 reins of control themselves. Uh. There was a provisional governor 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:54.720 in South Carolina that literally said this is a white 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:57.960 man's government. And they held elections by the end of 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:01.199 that year, um, all over the South. And as you 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:03.480 would expect a lot of times, he's a Confederate leaders, 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:09.640 former Confederate Confederate leaders one positions of power, if not governorship, um, 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:11.839 you know, congress people. And we'll talk about that a 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:15.960 little bit more later. But they organized these state legislatures 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:20.040 and uh, one of the things they did was said, 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:22.319 all right, you know what, we need to really pull 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:26.240 the South out of despairs to set up free schools, um, 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:28.600 but for white people only. We're not gonna have black 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:31.120 children in our schools, but we're gonna have free public 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.120 education for everyone else. Yeah. So that was just right 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:37.800 off the bat. The first time public education was introduced 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:40.480 in the South, it was segregated, which set the stage 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.680 for segregation throughout a lot of the twentieth century. The 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:46.679 rest of the nineteenth century and there in a lot 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.040 of the twentieth century, right, and you'll start to notice, 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.680 like a lot of the stuff that the South dealt 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:57.040 with and tried to saddle on its black citizenry finds 0:09:57.080 --> 0:10:00.160 it's its origins in the black codes that were were 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.720 written in these state Southern or Southern State Conventions of 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:06.400 eighteen sixty five. They just popped up everywhere. This is 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:12.199 where it all began. Yeah, I mean, it's really pretty despicable, 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:16.160 Like the idea that these people were finally freed by 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:18.520 law and they said, well, here, you know, let's just 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:20.800 make a bunch of laws then, like remember the good 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:25.560 old colonial times when uh we had all these laws. Uh, 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:28.680 let's just do that again, so we can remain in power, 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:31.760 we can keep our status quo going. And sure, we 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.640 might have to pay some wages. Now I tried to 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:36.640 look and find what wages might have been. I'm sure 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:40.120 it was, you know, a pittance, but that was kind 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.120 of the only thing they would acquiesce to. Otherwise they 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:46.800 wanted it to look and feel and smell exactly like 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:49.800 uh it did during the enslaved period. Yeah, and they 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:53.960 had to acquiesced to that because part of um, part 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:57.719 of the requirements for returning to the Union as the 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.640 state was to have abolition of slave and support abolition 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.679 of slavery. And then also it was it was a 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.600 there was a constitutional law now with the Thirteenth amend 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:09.839 and said there's no more slavery in the United States. 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:12.439 It doesn't matter where you are, you can't enslave anybody. 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:14.520 So they had to do that. But it's like you said, 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:18.640 they figured out every mental gymnastic they could make to 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:23.480 recreate the slave economy in this new context of people 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:27.640 being free and you're not being allowed to have slaves anymore. Right, 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.400 I think that's a good setup. Okay, it feels like 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:33.600 a break time, I think so. Yeah, yeah, it does 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.000 kind of feel that way. Do you feel that way? 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:39.280 I feel it. I definitely feel it. Wait, I'm not 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:40.920 feeling so much like a break now. All right, Well, 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:43.720 let's keep going them. No, no no, no, okay, I'm feeling 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.240 like came back. Okay, it came back. All right, We're 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:48.079 gonna take a quick break. I wonder if we did 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:50.120 that for like ten minutes, like a Family Guy episode, 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.559 if people would just turn it off. Yeah, I'm sure 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:55.200 a lot of them have already. Anyway, all right, we'll 0:11:55.200 --> 0:12:27.720 be right back. Okay. So Christmas is approaching at the 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:31.600 end of I guess what is that? And there were 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:35.640 a couple of rumors floating around these different communities. One 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.080 was in the black community. They were like, hey, I 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.160 hear for Christmas, we're gonna get forty acres in a 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:46.600 mule for every family on Christmas Day. And so let's 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:49.040 not sign any work contracts or anything. Let's see what 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:50.960 kind of happens here. We may be able to have 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:53.640 our own farms and to work for ourselves and to 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:58.240 be enterprising, uh families on our own. And the other 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:00.640 rumor that was going around was in the white community 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:03.640 in the South, which was, hey, they all think that 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:06.520 they're going to get forty acres in the mule. This 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:08.880 is not gonna happen. They may be giving out a 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:10.680 little bit of land here and there, but this is 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.840 definitely not happening. And when this goes down in Christmas Day, 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.040 there's gonna be a huge rebellion and it's going to 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.439 be a big problem for us. And I was looking 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:21.560 into that forty acres in a mule thing. Apparently it 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.720 all came out of um William two Comps sherman Field 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:28.960 Order number fifteen, where he basically said everything from Jacksonville 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.840 to Charleston. Thirty miles inland is going to be set 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.720 aside for newly freed slaves to basically own and live 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.640 and work. And it was just meant to be this 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:41.720 little area. It never was fulfilled. But somehow that got 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:45.240 turned into among the black community in the South forty 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.120 acres in a mule, which I had never heard before. Like, 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:50.720 I just thought the government had always promised everybody forty 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:56.480 acres in a mule. Yeah. I wasn't sure about the 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:58.880 origins of that, and I knew that they were going 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:02.720 to reappropriate some land, but um, yeah, I never knew 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:05.720 that it was not an earnest sort of offer. Well. 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:08.360 They also it was based on the idea that the 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:13.240 North had confiscated tons of land from the Confederacy, and 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:15.679 so they did think that they were going to redistribute 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:19.680 it to newly freed black Americans. But apparently part of 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:22.480 the Johnson plan was to give that land back to 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.880 the original owners, and so that's how it got scuttled. 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.320 That's right. So all this stuff is going on, there's 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:31.880 a lot of people scared on both sides. There's a 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.240 lot of fear, uh, And this is kind of the 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:39.880 background that's set up these Black codes UM mainly in 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:43.080 Mississippi and South Carolina. So I saw there were there 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.840 were black codes in other states. I know Texas had one, 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:47.960 I believe North Carolina had one. I think a lot 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.880 of the Southern states. If they didn't actually enact them, 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.440 then they were they had they had written them or 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.680 drafted them, or trying to at least. But I think 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.560 South Carolina and Mississippi's were maybe the most tanous of 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:05.920 all of them. Yeah, I mean sure, that was my thing. 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.680 Mississippi's was supposed to be even worked in South Carolina. Yeah, 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.000 that was what I saw as well. Mississippi seems to 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.120 be to have been the worst of the worst. But 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:19.320 these codes fell into a um sort of a group 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:21.680 of four or five different ways that they could restrict 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:27.080 someone's rights through law, uh with with technically skirting the 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:31.720 abolition amendments. And basically what they did is they figured 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:37.760 out that if you wanted black people to work, because 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:41.320 there was this idea that among Southerners, among white Southerners, 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:43.840 I should say, that black people wouldn't work on their own. 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:46.440 They had to be forced in to work through like slavery, 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:48.680 or they had to be forced into work by some 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:51.400 other new law, but if left to their own devices, 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:54.600 they just wouldn't work and the economy would fall. So 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:57.320 that was the idea at least. I don't know if 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.280 that was a pretext for just some deeply racist off 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:02.600 or that was deeply racist, But if it was really 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:05.320 just that was the kind of idea that was supporting 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:08.360 like the moneyed class, and that idea trickled down into 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.040 white society in the South. I'm not sure, but that 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:13.040 was kind of like the premise that they were going 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:15.440 on when they were writing these plaque codes, trying to 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.920 figure out how to force black people into work agreements 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:23.480 that benefited the white people they were working for. Yeah, 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:25.920 and it's even a little more despicable than you might 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:28.880 think because they they also dressed it up with a 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:35.520 few basic rights that you know, you see, you read stories, 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:37.240 and you don't know how widespread it was. But even 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:40.000 some of these basic rights I think many times weren't 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:45.000 um enacted. Uh, they may have been on the books 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:47.680 or at least offered on the books, but in order 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:51.200 to um be a person of color back then, and 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:54.120 to say like, hey, wait a minute, it says here 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:56.920 that I can sue somebody, and I can acquire my 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.800 own property and I can you know, enjoy the fruits 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:04.000 of my own labor um. They have to be able to, 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:06.959 you know, hire out an attorney and get it in 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:09.720 front of a judge, and all these things were, you know, 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:13.200 next to impossible basically, So even if they did dress 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:16.000 it up a little bit with some basic rights, it 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.440 was it was these weren't rights that were being enshrined, 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.119 you know, right, or even if they were, it's like, 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:24.800 oh wow, thanks a lot for the most some of 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.200 the most basic human rights that should be afforded to anybody, 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:33.960 like recognizing our marriages as legitimate. Apparently, in the Annabellum South, 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.720 black people were viewed as so subhuman that there they 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.600 couldn't possibly marry one another in any kind of context 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.400 that white people saw marriage and their children were all 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:48.800 by definition than illegitimate. Well, in the super progressive post 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:53.080 Civil War South, now their marriages were recognized as legal 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:56.560 and their children were recognized as legitimate. How far have 0:17:56.680 --> 0:17:59.760 we come? Basically, the white Southerners were saying to themselves, 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:02.560 as long as you married another black person, by the way, 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:04.080 that was the other thing too, you said, you can 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:07.240 sue um, you you all all that kind of stuff. 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:09.639 You could sue another black person, You still could not 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:13.040 sue a white person. You couldn't, um have anything to 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:14.879 do with the arrest of white person. The best you 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:17.399 could hope for is to go down to a judge 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:21.600 and fill out a complaint against a white person. Conversely, chuck, 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:26.120 at least I believe in it might have been South 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:30.119 Carolina or Mississippi. You, Um, if you were a white person, 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.359 you could you could arrest any black person you wanted 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:36.320 for even a misdemeanor, like any white person could arrest 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:38.520 any black person. But a black person could only fill 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:41.119 out a complaint against a white person in front of 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:45.160 a judge right where it went into the circular file. Yeah. 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:48.159 And you probably were risking your health, well being, and 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:51.240 possibly life by filing a complaint or filling out a 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:53.480 complaint against a white person as a black person in 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:56.280 the in the post Civil War South, you know, yeah, 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:59.960 absolutely another and you know, we'll talk about other civil 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.359 rights that were violated along the way, or at least limited. Um. 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.880 But another big way these black codes uh helped restrict 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.760 you know, their freedoms ultimately was through something through these 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:14.800 labor contracts. Uh. They basically said in South Carolina that 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.360 if you want to work, then you will work as 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.639 a servant. Um, we're not going to call you a 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.800 slave anymore. You'll be a servant. Uh. And we're still 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:25.960 gonna be called masters. And you have to sign this 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:29.560 contract and uh, we will pay you a wage. It 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.159 will all be in writing, has to be approved, but 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.399 in witnessed by a judge. But here's the deal. You 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.959 have to live in our property. You have to stay quiet, 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:40.240 you can't get in the way. You have to work 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:44.240 from sunrise to sunset except on Sunday. You can't leave, 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:47.920 you can't go anywhere, you can't have visitors. And basically 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:51.160 everyone looked around and said, well, what's the difference this 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:53.840 small wage that we're being paid, and they said yes. 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.720 Basically they're like, yeah, that's everything. That's the whole thing 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.280 right there. And I also saw chuck in one place 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.440 that the wages that were paid to these dow black 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:08.399 servants who were formerly slaves were basically what the white 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:12.560 plantation owners have been spending to feed and clothe and 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:16.920 house their slaves. So for them, there was basically no 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:20.439 no change in net gain or net output. It was 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:24.800 just now they were directing that toward them, the black 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:29.920 workers as wages instead. That's it. That was the only difference. 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:34.879 And then wonder if they charged them rent. I don't know. 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.159 I saw that in some cases they did have to 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:40.560 house people who stayed on their land, but I think 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.760 that they did, and they were allowed to charge them rent. 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:46.439 They were also allowed to deduct from their wages for 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.879 like time, um like all like, yes, there were I 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:53.480 get the impression that there was a lot of ways 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:55.640 that you could take back a lot of those wages 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:58.520 that you paid somebody. One of the other ways that 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:01.720 you could take back that money is through your local 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:06.119 town store, which would um, which set up a system 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:09.080 of what's called debt peonage, which is kind of like 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:11.440 you know, the whole company store set up that miners 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:14.520 in the North got into and like the early nineteen hundreds, 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:18.520 you your little fifteen tons of cold, but you can't 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:20.359 go to heaven because you know, your soul of the 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:23.199 company store. Kind of thing that found its root in 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:26.959 the South in around eighteen sixty five, where if you 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.960 were in this labor contract, you could go to local 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:34.800 store and offer half of your crops as like UM 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.800 capital and then start borrowing. And so all of a sudden, 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:41.600 people who had been enslave before and could have nothing 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:46.080 now had free credit at the local store. And when 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:48.959 the when the credit was called in at the end 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:52.520 of the season, when they harvested their crops, they frequently 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:54.960 found not only were all their crops taken, but like 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:57.440 all the stuff they had bought was being called back 0:21:57.440 --> 0:22:00.639 in and was taken to to cover their debts, like 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:05.280 because of huge crazy interest rates involved. So they were 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:08.600 trapped in this cycle where once they entered and they 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:11.159 had to chuck you said it yourself. They had to 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:14.600 engage in these labor contracts. Once they entered them, they 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:17.080 did not get back out, and all of the advantage 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:20.240 was towards the white the white plantation owners and the 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:25.880 white store owners. They're also allowed to whip anyone under eighteen, 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:29.520 any servants under eighteen, and if it was someone over eighteen, 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:34.639 you could get a judge's permission basically to whip somebody. 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:37.040 Um if they you know, if it got just so 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:38.919 bad that they said, you know, I can't even I 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:41.640 can't do this, I'm quitting this job, I'm breaking this contract. 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:43.480 Then they were basically like all right, well, you're not 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:46.520 gonna get paid anything. Then they could uh take back 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:50.080 their wages and they were essentially forfeited, and they could 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:52.800 be arrested, and the judge could say, no, you're going 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:57.119 rap back to where you came from because, uh, you 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:00.600 broke a contract, and it's it's just risk end as 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.240