Enticement Laws and Labor Contract Enforcement Chain Black Workers

Southern Black Codes created interlocking enforcement mechanisms. Enticement laws made it a crime to offer work to a laborer under contract to another employer, preventing competitive wages. Vagrancy laws required any Black person without a labor contract to pay a fine; inability to pay meant arrest and rental to a planter at no wage. Contract breach by workers was a crime punishable by arrest and forced labor, while planters faced only civil suits for nonpayment of wages.