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What were the black codes? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here too. So this
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: is a real deal wing getting ding stuff you should
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: know episode by goodness, By goodness, yeah, I'm trying to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: toss a bone to the churchy types that listened to us.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Sure not take the Lord's name in vain for no
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: good reason, by god, Wait a minute, sorry, I just
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: messed it up. You undermined everything, and we have no
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: way of getting rid of that, now, that's right, no
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: edit function whatsoever. So uh, this was your pick the
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Black Codes, which I had heard the term before, but
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I did not know anything about. And as I was
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: researching it, good pick, by the way, I think this
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: is something that everybody should know about. UM. But as
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I was researching it, my my brain kept trying to
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: like flesh it out further, flesh it out further, and
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: like expand it. Um. And the Black Couds definitely touched
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: a ton of other stuff. And you can make a
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: lot of cases that they're still UM followed in some
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: ways or at least mentally in America. UM. But they
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: existed historically in such a narrow period of time that
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: they basically came and went in about a year, which
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: makes it astounding the impact that they had. You know. Yeah,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and this is uh our buddy Dave Ruse and how
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: stuff works. And uh, I got a lot of good
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: information from the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Yeah, that's a robust website. Yeah,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the Mississippi Encyclopedia. I can't forget that it's made out
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: of bark, That's right. But you're talking about the Black Codes,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, in short, I guess as a
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: precursor definition, these were a series of laws that, like
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you said, weren't I mean, they kind of almost didn't
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: even fully make it onto the books in some ways
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: before they were taken off the books. But they were
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: laws that Southern white people, notably and especially you know,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: plantation owners and and people that uh owned enslaved people
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: came around and said, hey, you know what uh civil
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: wars over and I know this emancipation proclamation has been
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: around for a little bit where it hasn't quite gotten
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: around everyone down here about that, and maybe we should
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: just devise a series of laws that essentially re enslave
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: these people. Uh. And you know, the only difference really
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: will be that there will be some kind of wage involved. Yeah, yeah,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that was it. They were trying to figure out how
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to read gain there agricultural society which had been built
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: exclusively on the backs almost exclusively on the backs of
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: enslaved people, free labor that you just had to pay
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: to buy a person and then feed them and clothe
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: them and house them. But like the labor was free,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: they had to figure out how to do that in
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: the context of it being illegal to own people. Now, Yeah,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: they would to keep the status quo exactly, and that
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: you know that it worth It's worth pointing out that
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the Northern corporations were fully on board with this plan
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: because they didn't want any disruption to their supply chain
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of uh, you know, certainly cotton or anything that was
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: built on the back of the labor of enslaved people
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: that was being sent up north for manufacturing and stuff
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: like that. So they didn't want any work disruptions either. Um,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: the Northern citizens it was a bit of a different
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: story in many cases, and we'll get into all that,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: but maybe we should start with the end of the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Civil War. Okay, let's April eighteen sixty five. Uh, Civil
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: War ends. Like we said before, the Emancipation Proclamation had
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: been on the books for a couple of years. But um,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: certainly white southern plantation owners were not doing their best
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: to get the word out that everything was different now
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and that these people were now freed. Um. They they
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: wanted to keep that as you know, quiet as possible,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: which was pretty easy to do back then. Yeah, because
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: it was, Um there were things called slave codes, and
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: one of the big slave codes is that it was
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: illegal to teach a slave to read or write. So yeah,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: it was pretty easy to keep information out of the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: grape vine. Um, if you had a general population that
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: that couldn't pick up a newspaper and read it, you know,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: that's right. Uh So Lincoln and I'd never realized Lincoln
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: was shot so soon after the war ended. It's really
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: never I don't think it. It hit me that it
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: was just five days later. It makes you wonder what
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: could have happened. But yeah, it was really surprising that
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: it happened that quick too. Yeah, So five days later,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Lincoln has gone Vice President Andrew Johnson takes over and
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: he is tasked with leading the reunification of uh, these
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: United States he was a Southerner, very important, and one
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: of the first things he did was say, you know what,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: why don't I just appoint a bunch of military governors
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: for now and uh to these Confederate states so we
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: can get everything kind of organized and get everything set up.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: And so one thing about Johnson was that he and
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: actually Lincoln before him, favored kind of a forgiving plan
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: for re entry of southern states that had succeeded back
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: into the Union. And there was like a real kind
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: of a light touch. I think one of the big
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: factors was a ten percent plane where only ten percent
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: of the population had to swear an oath of allegiance
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to the Union again um. And that that was a
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: that that put it out. The Johnson plan at odds
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: with with Congress, right, Um, George. But one of the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: things that Johnson did take up was this idea of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: a Freedman's Bureau, which is basically this idea, Okay, the
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: South is ruined, we wrecked it, but it was already
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: really backwards to begin with, and we want to modernize it.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: One of the things we have to do to modernize
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: it is to take this group of new citizens that
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: were it lived before, but they weren't considered citizens, and
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: now we have to figure out a way to, um
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: to get them integrated into the society of the South,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna set up the Freedman's Bureau to do that. Yeah,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: we're talking like including women and children, like four million people. Yeah,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: so this is a lot of a lot of people
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: to uh, I mean, I guess attempt to reintegrate into society.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And the Freedman's Bureau did a few things. Um. They
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: you know, they worked on wages to try and make
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: sure that wages were fair. Uh. They tried to make
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: sure that um, these men generally men could go find
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: jobs if they wanted to and like choose who they
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: wanted to work for. Uh. They had courts that they
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: set up if you had a dispute with a wide employer, supposedly,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: these courts would be there to uh to at least
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: hear your case. And while this is going on, the
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: white Southerners were not so happy. They didn't like the
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Freedman's Bureau. They didn't like these new rules. They didn't
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: like these military governors from the Union that were set up,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: even if temporary and they're temporarily and they were like,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta get this back under our control
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: like quickly. Yeah, because the Freedman's Bureau was operated by
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the UM the military itself, so there was like no
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: questioning this. It was an occupying force in the South
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: basically saying this is how it's going to be, and
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: we're here to make sure that that's how it goes down.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Um and yeah, and the white Southerners were not happy
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: about that at all. But part of Johnson's plan, remember
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I said it had kind of a light touch, and
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: it was based on a lot more forgiveness than punishment, UM,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: was that once you hit that ten percent mark where
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: your population has taken an oath to the Union again,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: you could um ratify a new state constitution basically start over.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And by the way, we're just gonna let white people
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: be involved in these new states. That's what Johnson's take was,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: that that's how it should be. And so that's kind
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: of how he decreed, and that was kind of the
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: beginning of reconstructions called the Presidential Reconstruction, and so some
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of the Southern states are all the Southern states said
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: about in eighteen sixty five creating new state constitutions yeah,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and they you know, they were starting to get it
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: together again, so they could kind of take back the
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: reins of control themselves. Uh. There was a provisional governor
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: in South Carolina that literally said this is a white
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: man's government. And they held elections by the end of
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that year, um, all over the South. And as you
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: would expect a lot of times, he's a Confederate leaders,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: former Confederate Confederate leaders one positions of power, if not governorship, um,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: you know, congress people. And we'll talk about that a
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: little bit more later. But they organized these state legislatures
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: and uh, one of the things they did was said,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: all right, you know what, we need to really pull
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the South out of despairs to set up free schools, um,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: but for white people only. We're not gonna have black
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: children in our schools, but we're gonna have free public
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: education for everyone else. Yeah. So that was just right
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: off the bat. The first time public education was introduced
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: in the South, it was segregated, which set the stage
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: for segregation throughout a lot of the twentieth century. The
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: rest of the nineteenth century and there in a lot
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, right, and you'll start to notice,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: like a lot of the stuff that the South dealt
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: with and tried to saddle on its black citizenry finds
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: it's its origins in the black codes that were were
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: written in these state Southern or Southern State Conventions of
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five. They just popped up everywhere. This is
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: where it all began. Yeah, I mean, it's really pretty despicable,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Like the idea that these people were finally freed by
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: law and they said, well, here, you know, let's just
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: make a bunch of laws then, like remember the good
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: old colonial times when uh we had all these laws. Uh,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: let's just do that again, so we can remain in power,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: we can keep our status quo going. And sure, we
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: might have to pay some wages. Now I tried to
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: look and find what wages might have been. I'm sure
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, a pittance, but that was kind
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: of the only thing they would acquiesce to. Otherwise they
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: wanted it to look and feel and smell exactly like
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: uh it did during the enslaved period. Yeah, and they
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: had to acquiesced to that because part of um, part
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: of the requirements for returning to the Union as the
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: state was to have abolition of slave and support abolition
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: of slavery. And then also it was it was a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: there was a constitutional law now with the Thirteenth amend
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: and said there's no more slavery in the United States.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter where you are, you can't enslave anybody.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: So they had to do that. But it's like you said,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: they figured out every mental gymnastic they could make to
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: recreate the slave economy in this new context of people
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: being free and you're not being allowed to have slaves anymore. Right,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's a good setup. Okay, it feels like
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: a break time, I think so. Yeah, yeah, it does
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: kind of feel that way. Do you feel that way?
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: I feel it. I definitely feel it. Wait, I'm not
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: feeling so much like a break now. All right, Well,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: let's keep going them. No, no no, no, okay, I'm feeling
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: like came back. Okay, it came back. All right, We're
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. I wonder if we did
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: that for like ten minutes, like a Family Guy episode,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: if people would just turn it off. Yeah, I'm sure
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of them have already. Anyway, all right, we'll
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: be right back. Okay. So Christmas is approaching at the
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: end of I guess what is that? And there were
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: a couple of rumors floating around these different communities. One
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: was in the black community. They were like, hey, I
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: hear for Christmas, we're gonna get forty acres in a
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: mule for every family on Christmas Day. And so let's
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: not sign any work contracts or anything. Let's see what
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: kind of happens here. We may be able to have
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: our own farms and to work for ourselves and to
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: be enterprising, uh families on our own. And the other
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: rumor that was going around was in the white community
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: in the South, which was, hey, they all think that
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: they're going to get forty acres in the mule. This
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: is not gonna happen. They may be giving out a
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: little bit of land here and there, but this is
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: definitely not happening. And when this goes down in Christmas Day,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be a huge rebellion and it's going to
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: be a big problem for us. And I was looking
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: into that forty acres in a mule thing. Apparently it
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: all came out of um William two Comps sherman Field
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Order number fifteen, where he basically said everything from Jacksonville
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: to Charleston. Thirty miles inland is going to be set
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: aside for newly freed slaves to basically own and live
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and work. And it was just meant to be this
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: little area. It never was fulfilled. But somehow that got
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: turned into among the black community in the South forty
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: acres in a mule, which I had never heard before. Like,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: I just thought the government had always promised everybody forty
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: acres in a mule. Yeah. I wasn't sure about the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: origins of that, and I knew that they were going
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: to reappropriate some land, but um, yeah, I never knew
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: that it was not an earnest sort of offer. Well.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: They also it was based on the idea that the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: North had confiscated tons of land from the Confederacy, and
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: so they did think that they were going to redistribute
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: it to newly freed black Americans. But apparently part of
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the Johnson plan was to give that land back to
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: the original owners, and so that's how it got scuttled.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: That's right. So all this stuff is going on, there's
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of people scared on both sides. There's a
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: lot of fear, uh, And this is kind of the
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: background that's set up these Black codes UM mainly in
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Mississippi and South Carolina. So I saw there were there
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: were black codes in other states. I know Texas had one,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I believe North Carolina had one. I think a lot
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: of the Southern states. If they didn't actually enact them,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: then they were they had they had written them or
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: drafted them, or trying to at least. But I think
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: South Carolina and Mississippi's were maybe the most tanous of
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: all of them. Yeah, I mean sure, that was my thing.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Mississippi's was supposed to be even worked in South Carolina. Yeah,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: that was what I saw as well. Mississippi seems to
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: be to have been the worst of the worst. But
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: these codes fell into a um sort of a group
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of four or five different ways that they could restrict
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: someone's rights through law, uh with with technically skirting the
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: abolition amendments. And basically what they did is they figured
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: out that if you wanted black people to work, because
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: there was this idea that among Southerners, among white Southerners,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I should say, that black people wouldn't work on their own.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: They had to be forced in to work through like slavery,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: or they had to be forced into work by some
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: other new law, but if left to their own devices,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: they just wouldn't work and the economy would fall. So
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: that was the idea at least. I don't know if
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: that was a pretext for just some deeply racist off
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: or that was deeply racist, But if it was really
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: just that was the kind of idea that was supporting
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: like the moneyed class, and that idea trickled down into
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: white society in the South. I'm not sure, but that
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: was kind of like the premise that they were going
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: on when they were writing these plaque codes, trying to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: figure out how to force black people into work agreements
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: that benefited the white people they were working for. Yeah,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: and it's even a little more despicable than you might
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: think because they they also dressed it up with a
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: few basic rights that you know, you see, you read stories,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and you don't know how widespread it was. But even
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: some of these basic rights I think many times weren't
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: um enacted. Uh, they may have been on the books
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: or at least offered on the books, but in order
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: to um be a person of color back then, and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to say like, hey, wait a minute, it says here
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: that I can sue somebody, and I can acquire my
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: own property and I can you know, enjoy the fruits
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: of my own labor um. They have to be able to,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: you know, hire out an attorney and get it in
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: front of a judge, and all these things were, you know,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: next to impossible basically, So even if they did dress
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: it up a little bit with some basic rights, it
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: was it was these weren't rights that were being enshrined,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: you know, right, or even if they were, it's like,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: oh wow, thanks a lot for the most some of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the most basic human rights that should be afforded to anybody,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: like recognizing our marriages as legitimate. Apparently, in the Annabellum South,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: black people were viewed as so subhuman that there they
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: couldn't possibly marry one another in any kind of context
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that white people saw marriage and their children were all
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: by definition than illegitimate. Well, in the super progressive post
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Civil War South, now their marriages were recognized as legal
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: and their children were recognized as legitimate. How far have
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: we come? Basically, the white Southerners were saying to themselves,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: as long as you married another black person, by the way,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: that was the other thing too, you said, you can
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: sue um, you you all all that kind of stuff.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: You could sue another black person, You still could not
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: sue a white person. You couldn't, um have anything to
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: do with the arrest of white person. The best you
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: could hope for is to go down to a judge
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and fill out a complaint against a white person. Conversely, chuck,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: at least I believe in it might have been South
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Carolina or Mississippi. You, Um, if you were a white person,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: you could you could arrest any black person you wanted
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: for even a misdemeanor, like any white person could arrest
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: any black person. But a black person could only fill
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: out a complaint against a white person in front of
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: a judge right where it went into the circular file. Yeah.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: And you probably were risking your health, well being, and
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: possibly life by filing a complaint or filling out a
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: complaint against a white person as a black person in
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the in the post Civil War South, you know, yeah,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: absolutely another and you know, we'll talk about other civil
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: rights that were violated along the way, or at least limited. Um.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: But another big way these black codes uh helped restrict
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: you know, their freedoms ultimately was through something through these
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: labor contracts. Uh. They basically said in South Carolina that
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: if you want to work, then you will work as
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: a servant. Um, we're not going to call you a
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: slave anymore. You'll be a servant. Uh. And we're still
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: gonna be called masters. And you have to sign this
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: contract and uh, we will pay you a wage. It
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: will all be in writing, has to be approved, but
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: in witnessed by a judge. But here's the deal. You
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: have to live in our property. You have to stay quiet,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: you can't get in the way. You have to work
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: from sunrise to sunset except on Sunday. You can't leave,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: you can't go anywhere, you can't have visitors. And basically
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: everyone looked around and said, well, what's the difference this
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: small wage that we're being paid, and they said yes.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Basically they're like, yeah, that's everything. That's the whole thing
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: right there. And I also saw chuck in one place
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: that the wages that were paid to these dow black
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: servants who were formerly slaves were basically what the white
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: plantation owners have been spending to feed and clothe and
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: house their slaves. So for them, there was basically no
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: no change in net gain or net output. It was
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: just now they were directing that toward them, the black
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: workers as wages instead. That's it. That was the only difference.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And then wonder if they charged them rent. I don't know.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I saw that in some cases they did have to
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: house people who stayed on their land, but I think
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that they did, and they were allowed to charge them rent.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: They were also allowed to deduct from their wages for
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: like time, um like all like, yes, there were I
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: get the impression that there was a lot of ways
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: that you could take back a lot of those wages
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: that you paid somebody. One of the other ways that
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: you could take back that money is through your local
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: town store, which would um, which set up a system
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: of what's called debt peonage, which is kind of like
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: you know, the whole company store set up that miners
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: in the North got into and like the early nineteen hundreds,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: you your little fifteen tons of cold, but you can't
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: go to heaven because you know, your soul of the
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: company store. Kind of thing that found its root in
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the South in around eighteen sixty five, where if you
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: were in this labor contract, you could go to local
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: store and offer half of your crops as like UM
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: capital and then start borrowing. And so all of a sudden,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: people who had been enslave before and could have nothing
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: now had free credit at the local store. And when
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: the when the credit was called in at the end
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: of the season, when they harvested their crops, they frequently
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: found not only were all their crops taken, but like
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: all the stuff they had bought was being called back
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: in and was taken to to cover their debts, like
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: because of huge crazy interest rates involved. So they were
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: trapped in this cycle where once they entered and they
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: had to chuck you said it yourself. They had to
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: engage in these labor contracts. Once they entered them, they
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: did not get back out, and all of the advantage
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: was towards the white the white plantation owners and the
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: white store owners. They're also allowed to whip anyone under eighteen,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: any servants under eighteen, and if it was someone over eighteen,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: you could get a judge's permission basically to whip somebody.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Um if they you know, if it got just so
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: bad that they said, you know, I can't even I
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: can't do this, I'm quitting this job, I'm breaking this contract.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Then they were basically like all right, well, you're not
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: gonna get paid anything. Then they could uh take back
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: their wages and they were essentially forfeited, and they could
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: be arrested, and the judge could say, no, you're going
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: rap back to where you came from because, uh, you
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: broke a contract, and it's it's just risk end as
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: you know, an enslaved person escaping and being returned to
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: their master. Right, So you would say, okay, well how
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: about you just don't work? Like there's your answer right there.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: They could just say I'm not gonna work. Maybe I'll
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: just hang around and try, uh try my luck. Just
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: hanging out like it would make a lot more sense
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: than ending up in debt and having to work for
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: you know, my former plantation owner. And that they had
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: that figured out too as part of the black Coats chuck.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: If you were uh caught without a labor contract, you
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: could be arrested unemployed from did not have a job.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right. So they, yes, they figured out how
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: to force black people into work by saying it's illegal
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: for you to not have a job. And the big
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: horrible irony of the whole thing is if you were
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: arrested for what they called vagrancy. You would go to jail.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: They would say, you owe us this huge exorbitant debt.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Is there any white plantation owner who would like to
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: come pay this debt? A plantation order would come along,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: pay the debt and say you now belong to me
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: because your debt was just transferred to me, and I'm
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: going to put you to work until you pay off
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: this high exorbitant debt. And you're going to be stuck
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in that same cycle as you would have been if
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: you just engaged in the labor contract to begin with
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and not been arrested for vagrancy. Right, or they could say, well, actually,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: your honor, I I learned quite a bit about carpentry
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: or or smith ing. I'm a great smithy. Didn't we
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: learn that what they were not called smithy z they
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: have to be though forever it's just too great a word,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: you know. Like I'm a cobbler, Like I really have
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of talent, so I'd like to open up
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: my own shop. And I think I can do this.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I have a lot of driving initiative. And the judge
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: would say no, no no, no, I'm sorry, I don't think
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you understand you have to work if you want to work,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: you have to sign a work contract and work for
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: a white person. You can't open up your own business,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: and or you're a vagrant. And then they would say, well,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: what about those white guys over there, they don't have jobs,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: And they said, well, but they're allowed to sign oaths
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: of poverty to get out of jail, so well, can
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: we do that? No, you can't do that. So it's
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: essentially just two separate systems set up from the beginning
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: with these black codes, two separate groups of laws depending
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: on your skin color and chuck. One of the other
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: UM owners parts about this is they're like, oh, if
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: you're a minor, you don't escape this either. Like there's
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: something now called apprenticeships, which is basically like vagrancy laws
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: for kids and um you can be put to work
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: as an apprentice and you don't even have to be paid.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: If you're under eighteen for a woman or under twenty
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: one for a man, you can be apprenticed out to somebody.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: An apprentice can be like, you're still a field worker.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you're actually learning a trade, although some
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: places did specify they did have to have to be
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: taught a trade and fed and clothed, and for all
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: intents and purposes, you were an enslaved person just as
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: much as you were before because you weren't being paid
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: for the labor you were now being forced to do well.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: And they could I think they could even take the
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: kids and just say, I'm sorry you your parents are negligent,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and so we're gonna take you in and a print
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: it and put you in our apprenticeship. I don't know.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I think they probably even call it a program that
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: gives it a little too much value. But they said,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: you know, sorry, your parents are negligent. We can take you. Uh,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: you have to work for me if you're a young
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: man until you're twenty one, or if you're a young
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: woman until you're eighteen. And um, that's the you know
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: it's there's a man called what was this? I know
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: his last name was Blackman. He wrote a book called
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Slavery by another name that had a lot to do
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: with this, And there was one story in here about
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: a gentleman named green Cottenham. This is a nineteen o eight,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: mind you, this is way way way later. He was
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: arrested for vagrancy in Alabama in nineteen o eight, auctioned
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: off to us deal where they chained him to Uh,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: they chained him up, put him in a coal mine
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: in Birmingham and said, all right, this is your new life. Uh,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: you have to do this until you're fine. Is repaid.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Um if he you know, if he collapsed, he was whipped.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: If he died, he would be buried in a pauper's
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: grave with everyone else. And I think out of the
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: thousand black men who are working for U. S. Steel
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: in less than one year, sixty of them died from homicide,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: accidents or disease. So this was a yeah, the North's
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: hands aren't clean about this, and and that was something
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: that like you know, the North frequently gets gets a
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: pass on on that um, especially among just kind of
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: like the white view of history that it was all
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the South's fault that reconstruction failed, um, that the South
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: was um unwilling to kind of progress forward and accept
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: black people into society. That was definitely true, but they
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: were aided in some ways by the North, and the
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: North definitely was engaged in some of these unsavory practices
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: as well. I think that's definitely worth pointing out. So
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about different laws depending on
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: your skin color. Uh. This wasn't just like a subjective opinion,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: like they literally did this with their courts. Uh. They
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: did have um certain new technically certain new freedoms for court.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Like we talked about suing someone but could only be
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: another person of color. Uh, you could be a plantiff
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: for a defendant, but only in cases. Uh. Well, I
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: guess a plaintiff only in cases where there was another
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: person of color involved. And the penalties were way different.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I mean a lot of the times you get the
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: death penalty if you were black, you would for the
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: literally the same crime, you would not get that penalty
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: if you were white. And even minor offenses, like the
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: smallest things you could imagine that you would be brought
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: in for Um, you would to be hired out and worked,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: uh you know, twelve fourteen hours a day, or you
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: were whipped right. And so the idea was that they
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: were making it basically illegal to be black, um. And
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: they made it illegal to be unemployed. And they set
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: up a system so that everybody, all black people, newly
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: freed black people in the South were funneled into this
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: economic system that favored white people and tried to recreate
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: slavery as best as possible, right, And one of the
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: ways that they got away with this, one of the
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: ways around this that was um that really kind of
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: brought jail into the forefront of this initiative to recreate
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the slave economy in the South, was actually found and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: is still found in the thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: That the amendment that abolished slavery. It said, you can't
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: enslave anybody anywhere in the United States, except unless as
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: a punishment for a crime, whereof the party shall have
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: been duly convicted. There is a loophole in the Amendment
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: to the Constitution that abolishes slavery and says that if
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: you've been convicted of a crime, you can be used
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: as a slave as punishment for that crime. And that
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: really got the attention of the Southern legislatures after the
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Civil War, and they said, okay, all right, well, then
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: how about we just start arresting black people on mass
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And that's what drove that whole illegalization of being black
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: in the South. Uh, that was written into the Black cones. Yeah,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, that's why they did the vagrancy laws,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: that's why they did the apprenticeship laws. It all was
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: just sitting there in front of their face with this
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: massive loophole, and it was still allowed to happen, um
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: well to a to a certain degree, which we'll get
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: to in a sec. Well, there's one good example. Let's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: give him the example of the pig laws real quick. Yeah,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: pig laws were uh, certainly in other places, but definitely
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: in Mississippi. I found where they they basically tried to
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: make any crime that it might be more likely that
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: a black person might commit way way more prosecutable, um
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: like grand larceny went from twenty five dollars to like
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: ten dollars. And the big one, which is why they
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: call them pig laws, was any farm animal that was stolen.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: And these could you know a farm animal could have
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a value of like a dollar or less. Uh, They said,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: that is also grand larceny because they knew that, uh,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: you know, formally, en slave person might be more likely
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: to steal the chicken for dinner so they could eat
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and survive, and make that a literal grand larceny offense.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Right like grand larceny published punishable by five years in jail,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: during which time you could be leased out by the
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: state to work for peanuts on a plantation. Um for
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: a white business owner. That was the setup. The sad
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: thing is is a lot of people today, a lot
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: of social and his storical critics say, yeah, it's still
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: going on. That loophole is still there, and there's still
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of slave labor being used. And even if
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: you're not being if you're not not being paid for
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: that labor, you're being paid so little, um that you
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: might as well be a slave. I think there was
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the most recent sentences. It was in two thousand five,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the most recent prison labor sensors. They found one point
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: five million prisoners were working, six thousand of which we're
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: working in the manufacturing center. Most of them were making
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: two dollars or less a day if they were being
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: paid at all. Geez and Chuck, um, I know, you know,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: there's awesome documentary on Netflix about the thirteenth Amendment and
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: the implications it has. Just it's called and it is
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: a It's one of those documentaries it's like life changing
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: after you watch it. It's I encourage everybody to go
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: watch that documentary. It's just that good. Right. Should we
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: take a break, Yes, all right, we'll be right back.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: So Chuck after the Civil War rands the Union says, Okay,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Southern States, come back, come back, go right, your your
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: your new state constitutions, show them to us, and let's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: see what you got. And the Southern states went off
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five and held their all white conventions
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: and wrote their new all white laws. Actually they're all
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: black laws, I should say. And they came back to
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: the Congress of the United States and said, okay, first,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: let us just explain before you make any judgments. And
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: and uh, the Congress was not at all amused by this.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: It was not very surprising. But there was a huge
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: um swath of Congress called the Radical Republicans, who were
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: they wanted the South punished. They were deeply offended that
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: the South had taken up arms against the nation. Um.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: They hated slavery, they thought it was disgusting. They thought
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: the South was backwards and it needed to be modernized.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: And they were not in any kind of particular mood
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: for allowing concessions for racist slave owners trying to recreate
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: the slave economy. And it it brought Congress crashing down
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: upon the South in the form of reconstruction. Yeah, I mean,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: they basically said you know what, We're not gonna seat
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: anyone you elect to Congress. Uh, we are not going
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to we're gonna invalidate any of these laws that you're
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: putting on the books. And some of the Southern states
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: said uh to themselves, like, oh, like, I think I
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: see the writing on the wall. This is really bad.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: And if we want to have any kind of agency
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: of self rule, we might need to walk back some
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: of these black codes a little bit because it's clear
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: that they're not um, they're not hip to what we're
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: trying to do here at all. Right, they saw through it.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know how, but they saw through our motives
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: and so we're just trying to recreate slavery. So even
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: though they had Johnson in office, they were like, we
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: have one of our own as president. Um, he was
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: vetoed by Congress, and it was essentially kind of a
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: hostile Congress towards Johnson and the South. Yeah, Johnson was
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: the first president to be impeached, and he was saved
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: from conviction in the Senate by just one vote. And
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: it wasn't over him being a racist, but he definitely
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: was a racist. He even said he vetoed the civil
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: rights Act of eighteen sixty six, which basically said black
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: people are citizens now, and this is what they deserve,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: just like any other citizen. And Johnson said, well, whoa, whoa,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: We've never done anything even remotely like this for white citizens,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: why should we do it for black citizens? And like
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: his veto even was syst um, and he and basically
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: everybody who wasn't on board with the Radical Republicans viewpoint
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: missed the idea that the newly freed, formerly enslaved black
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: citizens that were now citizens of the United States needed
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: a leg up to get on some sort of equal
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: footing with white people to be integrated in society. That
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: it would be a good idea for everybody to be
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: on fairly equal footing so that society could move forward faster.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: And to do that the people who in the economy, yes, exactly,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and to do that, the people who used to be
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: slaves needed a little bit of a leg up because
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: they've been kind of held back for four hundred years
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: at that point, or a couple hundred years at that point. Um.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: So that was kind of the premise that the Radical
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Republicans were basing all this on, and all of the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Conservatives were saying no, this is this is too much,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: it's too fast, it's too radical, Um, this is this
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: is a problem now, And the the Southern States started
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: to kind of get the sympathy of some Northern conservatives. Yeah,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: I mean they it's not like they were talked into
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: racist attitudes, but they were kind of talked into like, Hey,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: you know what's gonna happen if these freedmen start holding
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: office and they start getting in positions of power, is
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: you know, they're people don't want to work, so they're
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: gonna get laws passed that basically see to the fact
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: that they don't have to work and they can just
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: live off of us, and we don't want them to
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: get in Like I think in eighteen sixty seven, a
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: couple of years after the initial proposition proposition of these
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: black codes is the first time that these uh freedmen
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: actually participated and voted in elections. And these white Southerners
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: essentially kind of put the fear of God into these Northerners, saying,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: you see what's coming, right, and they kind of fell
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: for it. They did fall for it. There's a really
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: excellent article that I would dig everybody go read on
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Jacobin Um uh dot com. It's called Killing Reconstruction by
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Heather Cox Richardson, and she basically lays out how the
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: South said, Okay, all of our racist views are following
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: on deaf ears up north. They don't really like the
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: racism thing. What else could we do? And somebody said,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: what about classism? And they said, oh yeah, there's a
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: lot of rich people up in the North. They're gonna
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: love our classist argument. And so what they said is
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: exactly what you were saying. That if you let these
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: people who haven't haven't ever earned anything in their life
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: get elected to office, they're gonna get ahold of all
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: this taxpayer money and they're gonna redistribute wealth. They're gonna
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: take hard earned white wealth and redistribute it to lazy,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: shiftless former black slaves. And do you really want that?
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: And by the way, it has nothing to do with
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: being black. If you let any worker do that, if
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: you let any worker vote, any worker get into office,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: they're going to redistribute wealth. And even today, uh, Heather
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Cox richards And make a really great connection to today
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: where if you if we talk about an activist government,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: a government that says we're here to really help raise
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: the well being of everybody. People say activist government and
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: they want to redistribute wealth, and it's probably either run
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: by or being run for the benefit of people of color.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: That's still that whole idea still goes on today, and
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: it finds its roots in the post Civil War reconstruction South,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: where the Southerners finally got the ear and the sympathies
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: of the Northerners by shifting the focus from racism to classism. Well,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: they they scared them financially, there is going to hit
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: your pocketbook, and that really pricked up their ears at
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: that point. It did, and so people say, well, you know,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: reconstruction was abandoned, and that's exactly right. It was an
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: astounding project. From eighteen seventy three different constitutional amendments were introduced,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: past and ratified that ended slavery, that A created due
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: process of law, and that UM gave black men the
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: right to vote. Within five years, there was like it
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: was very promising. Black people were running and being elected
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: to Southern UM, Southern town councils, state legislators, judge ships,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: like things were happening. But then when the North kind
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: of lost interest or lost its initiative to keep going.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: It just fell apart, and the North definitely turned its
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: back on black Southern Americans and left them out high
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: and dry and opened the door for Jim crow Loss. Yeah,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I feel like this guy's I mean, I'm from the South,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: but you lived here quite a while. Like I feel
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: like we're always saying, hey, listen, it was a problem
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: all over the place everybody, And it's true, but this
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: is I don't know, it's hard to sort of break
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: the I mean, the stereotype is there for a reason
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: in the South obviously, but definitely I think there were
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: just so many comes as it um corporations and and
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: rich white Northerners that uh, you know, we need to
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: bring that up. Well, the KKK sucked a lot of
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: the oxygen down towards the South as far as blame goes,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: because they definitely did engage in a terror campaign to
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: like get black people out of politics and out of
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: like the idea that they should be participating in society.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: And then even when black people went ahead and did
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: it and the KKK wasn't around, just northern normal white
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: townspeople would riot and like kill like black office holders
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: and to keep the status quo going. So I mean
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: like it was. It was when the North left it.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: They just completely left black Southerners out to dry, like
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: in one of the biggest betrayals. It's it's ever taken
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: place in the history of this country. Yeah, I mean there,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: it definitely. I know that that nimby is sort of
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a modern internet phrase. Have you heard of that? No,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: not in my backyard. Oh yeah, yeah, I've heard that.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I've never heard the acronym there. Yeah. Now, I mean,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: you know how it is these days, everything is just shortened,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: so now you just say nimby on social media. But
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of nimbi nimbiness going on back then
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: for sure. For sure, and the idea that oh it's
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: not because they're black, it's because they're poor workers. We
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: can't give poorer workers rights. That it made it a
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: lot more palatable for northerns to kind of take part
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: and feel okay about themselves with that. That's right. So
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: again we just want to say what we were talking about,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: these black codes and the two types of reconstruction. We're
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: talking about like a one to fifteen year period in
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: American history, but it's one of the periods that has
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: some of the farthest reaching repercussions that are still around today. Um,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: and it's just astounding to me like that that it
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: went from slave codes to black codes to Jim Crow
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: laws and then finally the Civil Rights era got America
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: to say on paper, we're not racist any longer, which
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: is where a lot of people end it. But those
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: are the same people that point to the Civil Rights
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: are and say, see, America is not racist anymore, which
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: is probably the gas lighting is gas lighting you could
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: possibly experience in America today if you ask me, that's right.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And hey, if we're recommending documentaries along these lines, I'm
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: gonna recommend the HBO four part documentary Exterminate All the Roots.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Have you seen that one? No, it's great, it's uh.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: It's made and narrated by Raoul Peck, and it is
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: a four part series that basically draws the line from
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: the very beginning, like the very first uh efforts at
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: colonization and gen and genocide by the Spanish, you know, however,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: many hundreds of years ago that was, and they draw
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: he's he he basically kind of covers colonization in genocide
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: over the years throughout history. But the way he draws
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: direct straight lines from then to now and what we're
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: looking at now in America and all over the world
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: is really impactful. It's hard to describe how like some
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: of it is uh, straight up documentary. Some of it
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: is recreations, but like really really good historical recreations while
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: he's narrating, and he just uses amazing graphics to illustrate
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: to really hit home a lot of stuff. It's I mean,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: it's like going to school. It is super dense and
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and hetty, but I really, if you got four hours
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: to kill exterminate all the brutes is great. Yeah. That's
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: what kept coming up for me when we were researching
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Black codes. I was like, oh, that's still going on today.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Oh that's still how a lot of white people think
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: about black people today. Um, It's just it's nuts, Like,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: how how much of a society, our society is still
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: just kind of predicated on these these terrible impressions. You
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: know that we're created and per perpetuated by the Southern
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: planting planner class. Yeah, and that's why it's super frustrating
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: when anyone ever says like, oh, this is an eric
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: everyone just has an equal shot in this country. I
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: don't want to hear anything else. Yeah, I just I
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: can't even you know, it's hard to even head of
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: a discussion with someone who says something like that, I
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: know what you mean. Jim Crow was not that long ago. No,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: it wasn't. We'll keep chipping away at it, huh yeah,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: and we'll we'll, I mean, Jim Crow has sort of
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: been something we wanted to cover for a long time. Um, okay, Well,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you want to know more about
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Black Codes, there's a lot of ink that's been written
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: about it, and it is all really good and interesting
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: and eye opening, and you should probably spend a little
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: more time researching it. And since I said that it's
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this just
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: a letter of thanks from one of our oldest, uh
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: you know, most long time listeners. I think Ian Clarkson
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: has been listening for a while. Enjoyed Into the World,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: was a movie crusher when that was around, And uh,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: this is from Ian and Ian legit freaked out that
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: I'm reading this so good it always makes me happy
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: for sure. Howdy from Dallas, guys. I wanted to reach
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: out and just begin by saying thank you, for all
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: the joyful content you provide the world during the gloomy
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: time of covid UH and adolescence, I really needed a
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: boost that y'all provided. I've listened since I was seventeen.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Now I'm twenty five, and abe Stuff you Should Know
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: is my classroom long since I've exited school. Josh drove
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: me to get my archaeology minor, and Chuck is uh.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I know how about that? And Chuck has given me
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: and my family endless amounts of movies and nights of joy.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: We outsourced a lot of our movie picking to Chuck. Actually,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: all of you are wonderful humans, and I just wanted
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: to reach out and express my pure joy that I
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: received from Stuff you Should Know. I can't I think
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: all enough for being so insightful and kind with what
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: you create. Hope to one day be able to share
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: your catalog with my kids. I've written in once before
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: when I was in high school too, but I thought
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: i'd reach out again. Both of you remind my parents
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: of Click and clack. We've gotten that from a bunch
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: of people. That's the highest praise you can get anyway. Hope,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Hope pull as well. This if you should know podcast
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Office and that you're all enjoying you're descent into the holidays.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Your loyal fan, Ian Clarkson. Ian is a great dude.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: That was a fantastic email. Ian, thanks a lot for
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: that and hello from us. That's right, Hardy. Hello, that's right. Uh.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us like
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Ian did, you can send us an email to wrap
• 47:25
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• 47:27
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• 47:33
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• 47:41
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