NARRATOR
Black laborers who insisted on better wages and working conditions were regularly met with threats and violence. Vigilantes lynched whole families, and used the bullwhip on men and women as they had in slavery days. In 1865, more than two thousand black men women and children were reported murdered in Louisiana alone.
V/O WALKER
The violence in the South was a way to reestablish white supremacy.
TUNNELL
These gangs of whites pick out the guy who's trying to save his money, who's trying to get ahead. The man who is an inspiration to other black people in the community -- he's the one that gets murdered. It amounts to systematic culling of alpha males from the black community.
NARRATOR
The southern legal system became an instrument of intimidation. Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida passed laws that virtually prohibited freedmen from any work except as field hands. The laws were called "Black Codes." The aim was slavery without the chain.
BLIGHT
The Black Codes were laws passed to control and restrict and constrain the lives of the freed people, essentially rendering them bondsmen again under law.
NARRATOR
Some states made it illegal for freedmen to handle weapons and restricted them from buying or renting land. Black children could be seized from poor families and forced to work in the fields. If a black man had no job, he could be jailed and auctioned to a planter for his labor.
FONER
They make a travesty of the freedom that African Americans have acquired. They are so far from any notion of fairness or freedom that even northerners, who are not egalitarians, say these laws are unacceptable. And so northern Republicans are faced with a dilemma. They don't want to have a big fight with the president, but to accept the idea that Johnson's policy is a success, and accept the Black Codes, they feel means giving up the victory in the Civil War.
NARRATOR
To Louisiana's black veterans, one freedman offered this advice: "I would say to every colored soldier -- bring your gun home."
