Freedom in Chains

After the Civil War, Southern legislatures created The Black Codes, The Jim Crow laws, and Sharecropping to restrict the rights of free African Americans. They criminalized black lives and forced African Americans under the care of a white male and back into labor. The laws still have some effect today, as racism is still a prominent issue in today’s society; plaguing the media and making jobs difficult to find. These laws are greatly affected African Americans, they increased the amount of African Americans in prisons, and basically re-enslaved them to work on the plantations. All in all, the southern legislatures did everything in their power to force African Americans back into a slavery-like state.