Southern States Enact Black Codes to Re-Enslave Freedpeople

Within months of the war's end, former Confederate states enacted "Black Codes" that severely restricted the rights of freedpeople. Mississippi's codes forbade Black people from renting land outside cities, required annual labor contracts, and allowed children to be "apprenticed" to former slaveholders. South Carolina barred Black workers from any occupation except farming or domestic service without a special license. The codes were designed to recreate slavery's economic structure under anothe