The post-slavery laws that limited Black freedom are called?

• A. Slave patrols
• B. Black codes
• C. Slave codes
• D. Predecessors of modern policing

Answer: (B)

After emancipation, Southern states enacted Black Codes—laws specifically designed to restrict the freedoms of newly freed Black people. These codes aimed to keep Black labor under control and maintain a social order similar to slavery, using measures like vagrancy laws, labor contract requirements, curfews, and limits on rights such as property ownership, movement, and testifying in court. They’re distinct from slave codes, which governed enslaved people before emancipation, and from groups like slave patrols; those are about enforcement rather than the post–Civil War set of restrictions themselves. The term that best describes these post-slavery restrictions is Black Codes.