Slavery, Racism, and the Legacy of White Supremacy
According to the Texas State Historical Association, the Black Codes were “Were laws passed by southern state legislatures to define the legal place of blacks in society after the Civil War.” The 11th Texas Legislature produced these codes in 1866 to make sure that the hard-fought war for freedom from slavery was reversed. Under the codes blacks were not allowed to vote or hold office, serve on juries, and could only testify in a court of law if the testimony was against another black. “Interracial” marriage was against the law. The Black Codes also set up segregation on railroads and other public places. This shows the importance of white supremacy and how they are trying to hide these facts in Texas schools today.
The codes would set up a labor system that still used the terms “Master” and “Apprentice.” A master could require a black worker to work free in slave-like conditions. The master could pursue a worker that left a labor agreement in much the same way as a slave master could run down a chattel slave. The power to deduct wages for disobedience, absence, wasting time, and other work-related offenses was strict, for it was designed to control African Americans in a slave by another name relationship
The Black Codes also set up vagrancy laws that are now applied to poor people. This may partially explain from a historical point of view why African Americans always felt it better to flee from the police rather than surrender. Vagrancy laws were used to return former slaves to the plantations! This method was employed in San Antonio as local law enforcement often acted as agents of the former plantation owners like Asa Mitchell. The arrangements made between the sheriff and the police was to arrest African Americans who could not find work and put them in jail until their fine could be “worked off.” Some were sent to Sugarland, Texas at the Imperial Sugar factory. This resulted in false arrests of African Americans and though there would not be any outright plantations available in the 1960s the charge of vagrancy was often employed to any group of blacks standing on a street corner that numbered more than two.
The control and manipulation of African Americans has always been something that this racist society considered. America was built on racism and not the mythology of “freedom and justice for all.” A more complete way of looking at the present situation, where racist violence and police abuse are on the rise, is to fully grasp the power of white supremacy and how it has brainwashed people over hundreds of years. White Supremacy was the self-interest amongst poor whites who fought in the Civil War. Some historians have mistakenly made the false argument that they were acting against their own self-interest by fighting for the wealthy slave owners. This is only true in part, because their self-interest was tied to maintaining the institution of slavery and white privilege.
Most whites in the South did not own slaves, but their self-interest was in the fact embodied in the idea that an end to slavery would put them on the same level as Black people. In this way, no matter how poor they were they could always believe they were superior. “Race” covered up class inequality and became the motivating factor for poor whites to support the cause of the southern planters and slave owners. Racism became so tied to the mentality of poor whites that they fought for maintaining slavery.
