Black Codes were laws passed by white Southerners to restrict the rights of which group?

• A. Freedpeople
• B. Northern Merchants
• C. Immigrant Workers
• D. Federal Soldiers

Answer: (A)

After emancipation, Southern states used Black Codes to control the status and labor of the newly freed African Americans. These laws restricted Freedpeople from basic rights and freedoms—curbing things like mobility, voting, property ownership, and the ability to enter into independent labor contracts—often through vagrancy rules and harsh penalties that kept them tied to low-wage work under white authority. The intention was to maintain a social and economic order rooted in white supremacy and to prevent the freed population from fully exercising citizenship. These laws targeted the formerly enslaved, not Northern merchants, immigrant workers, or federal soldiers, whose groups weren’t the focus of these measures.