1. Antebellum state laws enacted to regulate slavery.
2. Laws enacted shortly after the Civil War in the ex-Confederate states to restrict the liberties of the newly freed slaves to ensure a supply of inexpensive agricultural labor and to maintain white supremacy.
“Clearly, leaders of the old South who survived the war were in no mood for racial equality. It was a bitter enough pill that the slaves were legally free; there was no inclination to go beyond the formal status. The Black Codes of 1865, passed in almost all of the states of the old Confederacy, were meant to replace slavery with some kind of caste system and to preserve as much as possible of the prewar way of life.” Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law
504 (2d ed. 1985).
