Entry · catalog no. 8400
Black Codes
/ /blæk koʊdz/ /BLAK KOHDZ
noun · Mississippi and the post-war South · 1860s
✓ Verified
1.
The laws passed by Southern states after the Civil War to control Black labor and limit freedom, including vagrancy laws and labor contracts.
“The Black Codes turned freedom into a new kind of bondage.”
2.
Used for any set of rules written to restrict Black people's rights under the law.
“The curfew law read like a Black Code.”
Origin & Attribution
After emancipation, Southern legislatures, beginning with Mississippi and South Carolina in the fall of 1865, passed laws regulating Black life: vagrancy statutes, apprenticeship laws, restrictions on owning land, and labor contracts. Mississippi's code was enacted in November 1865. The name Black Codes was used at the time and entered history books to describe them, and the laws were a key reason Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment. The term is the community's and historians' name for laws written against Black freedom.
1865
Mississippi enacts its Black Code
1866
Civil Rights Act of 1866 passes in response
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Mississippi and the post-war South · 1860s
Spoken by
Freed people, Radical Republicans, and historians
$BLACKCThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady161 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
35/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1865
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
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Atlanta, GA
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Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Black Codes, Mississippi Encyclopedia
article
■
Mississippi Black Code, 1865, American Yawp
document
■
+ Cite a sourceOn this day, Nov. 25, 1865, Equal Justice Initiative
article
See also