Black Code of Mississippi 1865

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Black Code of Mississippi
Overview
Context
About the Author
Explanation and Analysis of the Document
Audience
Impac
Document Text

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Abstract

In 1865 the Mississippi state legislature passed a series of related laws known as the Black Code. These laws, written within months of the conclusion of the Civil War and styled after the state’s antebellum slave code, represented the fi rst effort by white Mississippians to defi ne what freedom and citizenship would mean to recently freed slaves and others of African descent. As the Black Code reveals, the initial legal defi nition that whites offered suggests that they intended the condition of freedom for blacks to differ little from enslavement.

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