By Don Valentine
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” In the law that was intended to end slavery, Congress left a loophole which allowed peonage slavery. “Peonage” as annotated by PBS, “…called debt slavery or debt servitude, is a system where an employer compels a worker to pay off a debt with work. Legally, Peonage was outlawed by Congress in 1867. However, after Reconstruction, many Southern Black men were swept into Peonage through different methods…”
The Southern agrarian economy was fueled by the free labor of slaves. Absent slave labor, emancipation tilted the Southern economy toward collapse. That potential collapse could cripple the Union. In order to appease the South the federal government turned a blind eye when Southern states used the “Peonage” clause in the 13th Amendment to recreate free labor. This legal malfeasance was called the Black Codes.
Author Chuck Allen provides some examples of the Black Codes: “In Louisiana, it was illegal for a Black man to preach to Black congregations without special permission in writing from the president of the police. If caught, he could be arrested and fined. If he could not pay the fines, which were unbelievably high, he would be forced to work for an individual, or go to jail or prison where he would work until his debt was paid off. If a Black person did not have a job, he or she could be arrested and imprisoned on the charge of vagrancy or loitering.
This next Black Code will make you cringe. In South Carolina, if the parent of a Black child was considered vagrant, the judicial system allowed the police and/or other government agencies to “apprentice” the child to an “employer.” Males could be held until the age of 21, and females could be held until they were 18. Their owner had the legal right to inflict punishment on the child for disobedience, and to recapture them if they ran away.” To learn more read Thirteenth Amendment and Its Legacy by Duchess Harris.
