South Carolina - Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws

"In South Carolina persons of color contracting for service were to be known as "servants," and those with whom they contracted, as "masters." On farms the hours of labor would be from sunrise to sunset daily, except on Sunday. The negroes were to get out of bed at dawn. Time lost would be deducted from their wages, as would be the cost of food, nursing, etc., during absence from sickness. Absentees on Sunday must return to the plantation by sunset. House servants were to be at call at all hours of the day and night on all days of the week. They must be "especially civil and polite to their masters, their masters' families and guests," and they in return would receive "gentle and kind treatment." Corporal and other punishment was to be administered only upon order of the district judge or other civil magistrate. A vagrant law of some severity was enacted to keep the negroes from roaming the roads and living the lives of beggars and thieves."

Mississippi:

"Negroes must make annual contracts for their laborin writing; if they should run away from their tasks, they forfeited their wages for the year. Whenever it was required of them they must present licenses (in a town from the mayor; elsewhere from a member of the board of police of the beat) citing their places of residence and authorizing them to work. Fugitives from labor were to be arrested and carried back to their employers. Five dollars a head and mileage would be allowed such negro catchers. It was made a misdemeanor, punishable with fine or imprisonment, to persuade a freedman to leave his employer, or to feed the runaway. Minors were to be apprenticed, if males until they were twenty-one, if females until eighteen years of age. Such corporal punishment as a father would administer to a child might be inflicted upon apprentices by their masters. Vagrants were to be fined heavily, and if they could not pay the sum, they were to be hired out to service until the claim was satisfied. Negroes might not carry knives or firearms unless they were licensed so to do. It was an offence, to be punished by a fine of $50 and imprisonment for thirty days, to give or sell intoxicating liquors to a negro. When negroes could not pay the fines and costs after legal proceedings, they were to be hired at public outcry by the sheriff to the lowest bidder...."

"All the slave states passed laws banning the marriage of whites and blacks, so-called anti-miscegenation laws, as did several new free states, including Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.^[4] Indiana and Illinois shared borders with slave states and the southern populations of these states had cultures that shared more values with the South across the Ohio River than the northern populations. In several states the Black Codes were either incorporated into or required by their state constitutions, many of which were rewritten in the 1840s."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)

How sick can people be!

I know, to a degree. I guess you would have had to go through it to really know. It gets more insane and harder to understand the more we read about slavery, Jim Crow codes and civil rights. But no matter how much we learn through oral and written history, there's always going to be something more horrendous. You would think there would be an end to the misery at some point.

It's hard to believe this went on anywhere, let alone our country. I have a feeling there's still a lot of that mentality left.

Truth really is stranger (and more psychotic) than fiction.

I don't think they added "psychotic" into the mix before. I just wanted to point that out. The Jim Crow bunch turned a "whiter shade of pale, especially when they put those sheets on.