Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Freedmen and the enactment of Black Codes===
{{Main|Black Codes (United States)}}
[[File:The Union as It Was.jpg|thumb|An October 24th, 1874 [[Harper's Magazine]] editorial cartoon by [[Thomas Nast]] denouncing KKK and White League murders of innocent Blacks]]

Southern state governments quickly enacted the restrictive "[[Black Codes (United States)|Black Codes]]". However, they were abolished in 1866 and seldom had effect, because the Freedmen's Bureau (not the local courts) handled the legal affairs of freedmen.

The Black Codes indicated the plans of the Southern whites for the former slaves.{{sfnp|Donald |Baker |Holt |2001|loc=ch. 31}} The freedmen would have more rights than did free Blacks before the war, but they would still have only second-class civil rights, no voting rights, and no citizenship. They could not own firearms, serve on a jury in a lawsuit involving whites, or move about without employment.{{sfnp|Oberholtzer|1917|pp=128–129}} The Black Codes outraged Northern opinion. They were overthrown by the [[Civil Rights Act of 1866]] that gave the freedmen more legal equality (although still without the right to vote).{{sfnp|Donald|Baker|Holt|2001|p=527}}

The freedmen, with the strong backing of the Freedmen's Bureau, rejected [[Gang system|gang labor]] work patterns that had been used in slavery. Instead of gang labor, freed people preferred family-based labor groups.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997|p=67}} They forced planters to bargain for their labor. Such bargaining soon led to the establishment of the system of [[sharecropping]], which gave the freedmen greater economic independence and social autonomy than gang labor. However, because they lacked capital and the planters continued to own the means of production (tools, draft animals, and land), the freedmen were forced into producing cash crops (mainly cotton) for the land-owners and merchants, and they entered into a [[crop-lien system]]. Widespread poverty, disruption to an agricultural economy too dependent on cotton, and the falling price of cotton, led within decades to the routine indebtedness of the majority of the freedmen, and the poverty of many planters.{{sfnp|Barney|1987|pp=251, 284–286}}

Northern officials gave varying reports on conditions for the freedmen in the South. One harsh assessment came from [[Carl Schurz]], who reported on the situation in the states along the Gulf Coast. His report documented dozens of [[extrajudicial killing]]s and claimed that hundreds or thousands more African Americans were killed:<ref name="Schurz 1865">{{cite report |first=Carl |last=Schurz |author-link=Carl Schurz |title=Report on the Condition of the South |date=December 1865 |id=U.S. Senate Exec. Doc. No. 2, 39th Congress, 1st session |url= http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext05/cnsth10.htm |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20071014083500/http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext05/cnsth10.htm |archive-date=October 14, 2007}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=The number of murders and assaults perpetrated upon Negroes is very great; we can form only an approximative estimate of what is going on in those parts of the South which are not closely garrisoned, and from which no regular reports are received, by what occurs under the very eyes of our military authorities. As to my personal experience, I will only mention that during my two days sojourn at Atlanta, one Negro was stabbed with fatal effect on the street, and three were poisoned, one of whom died. While I was at Montgomery, one Negro was cut across the throat evidently with intent to kill, and another was shot, but both escaped with their lives. Several papers attached to this report give an account of the number of capital cases that occurred at certain places during a certain period of time. It is a sad fact that the perpetration of those acts is not confined to that class of people which might be called the rabble.}}

The report included sworn testimony from soldiers and officials of the Freedmen's Bureau. In [[Selma, Alabama]], Major J. P. Houston noted that whites who killed 12 African Americans in his district never came to trial. Many more killings never became official cases. Captain Poillon described white patrols in southwestern Alabama:<ref name="Schurz 1865" />
{{blockquote|1=who board some of the boats; after the boats leave they hang, shoot, or drown the victims they may find on them, and all those found on the roads or coming down the rivers are almost invariably murdered. The bewildered and terrified freedmen know not what to do—to leave is death; to remain is to suffer the increased burden imposed upon them by the cruel taskmaster, whose only interest is their labor, wrung from them by every device an inhuman ingenuity can devise; hence the lash and murder is resorted to intimidate those whom fear of an awful death alone cause to remain, while patrols, Negro dogs and spies, disguised as Yankees, keep constant guard over these unfortunate people.}}

Much of the violence that was perpetrated against African Americans was shaped by gender prejudices regarding African Americans. Black women were in a particularly vulnerable situation. To convict a white man of sexually assaulting Black women in this period was exceedingly difficult.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997}}{{Page needed|date=February 2024}} The South's judicial system had been wholly refigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of whites.{{explain|date=January 2021}}{{citation needed|date=January 2021}} Trials were discouraged and attorneys for Black misdemeanor defendants were difficult to find. The goal of county courts was a fast, uncomplicated trial with a resulting conviction. Most Blacks were unable to pay their fines or bail, and "the most common penalty was nine months to a year in a slave mine or lumber camp".<ref>{{cite book |last=Blackmon |first=Douglas A. |title=Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II |publisher=Anchor Books |year=2009 |isbn=9780385722704 |location=New York |page=16}}</ref> The South's judicial system was rigged to generate fees and claim bounties, not to ensure public protection. Black women were socially perceived as sexually avaricious and since they were portrayed as having little virtue, society held that they could not be raped.<ref name="Gendered Strife and Confusion p202">{{cite book |last=Edwards |first=Laura F. |title=Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction |date=1997 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Chicago |isbn=978-0-252-02297-5 |page=202}}</ref> One report indicates two freed women, Frances Thompson and Lucy Smith, described their violent sexual assault during the [[Memphis Riots of 1866]].<ref name="Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau">{{cite book |last=Farmer-Kaiser |first=Mary |title=Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau: Race, Gender, and Public Policy in the Age of Emancipation |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2010 |isbn=9780823234943 |location=New York |page=160}}</ref> However, Black women were vulnerable even in times of relative normalcy. Sexual assaults on African-American women were so pervasive, particularly on the part of their white employers, that Black men sought to reduce the contact between white males and Black females by having the women in their family avoid doing work that was closely overseen by whites.{{sfnp|Jones|2010|p=70}} Black men were construed as being extremely sexually aggressive and their supposed or rumored threats to white women were often used as a pretext for [[lynching]] and castrations.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997|pp=21–73}}