Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Under black codes, many states required Black people to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested, fined and forced into unpaid labor.
Even as former enslaved people fought to assert their independence and gain economic autonomy during the earliest years of Reconstruction. While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans—including the right to buy and own property, marry, make contracts and testify in court (only in cases involving people of their own race)—their primary purpose was to restrict Black peoples’ labor and activity. Black people who broke labor contracts were subject to arrest, beating and forced labor, and apprenticeship laws forced many minors into unpaid labor for white planters.
To understand the end of Reconstruction, it's important to take the following facts into account:
- 1872: The General Amnesty Act was passed by the Congress. This act removed restrictions placed upon Confederate officials.
- 1873: the Fourteenth Amendment was scarcely interpreted in the Slaughterhouse cases. This meant that state law was violationg individuals' civil rights.
- 1875: The Civil Rights Act of this year, which allowed black people to be part of a jury and which didn't allow racial discrimination in public places, was eventually not enforced.
- Finally in 1876 the idea of the Reconstruction was left aside by both parties and in 1883 the Civil Rights Act was declared unconstitutional.
All of these reasons, caused the end of the Reconstruction and made Republicans forsake black people, finally causing the infringement of civil rights and full segregation.
Paople took too much money from banks and could not pay back so great depression
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