They don't both start from the same place. Remember, the laws passed when this country was founded were crafted to give white people every advantage possible and oftentimes at the expense of black people while simultaneously relegating black people to 2nd class citizen status via a series of laws and court cases (Jim Crow, Black Codes, etc.)
The
Black Codes, sometimes called
Black Laws, were laws governing the conduct of
African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832,
James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free colored persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites, in the exercise of civil and political rights."
[1] Although Black Codes existed before the Civil War and many Northern states had them, it was the Southern U.S. states that codified such laws in everyday practice. The best known of them were passed in 1865 and 1866 by
Southern states, after the
American Civil War, in order to restrict African Americans' freedom, and to compel them to work for low wages.
Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Named after a
Black minstrel show character, the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-
Civil War era until 1968—were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence and death.
The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the
13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.
Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.
The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former
Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.
These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.
www.annuity.org
