Another trip down memory lane, history to be exact, for my state of Mississippi.
A state that still tries to deny the effects of slavery.
There is a common myth that Mississippi fought in the Civil War over taxation…….but in their statement of session tells a different story (and the true reason why)….in their own words….
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
But do not take my word for it….read the actual document for yourself….
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp
Here when I was in school you could not graduate if you had not taken Mississippi history….but that course left a whole lot out of the class….like the Republic of West Florida, Free State of Jones, and the ‘Black Codes’…..
“Black Codes? Yep it was Mississippi’s way of trying to reinvent slavery….
On November 25, 1865, Mississippi created the first of the Black Codes. Designed to re-create slavery in all but name, this signified the white South’s massive resistance to the freeing of their labor force and the lengths to which it would go to tie workers to a place under white control.
Remember, the point of slavery was labor. If anything, we don’t talk about this enough. Yes of course it was racist, but the whole reason was to have a permanent labor force. Whites would do anything to create that labor force. And they did, engaging in crimes against humanity for hundreds of years. They had no intention of letting the end of technical slavery get in the way of labor control.
The impact of slavery’s end is hard to overestimate. But the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves immediately, and the ratification of the 13th Amendment did not take place until well after the war’s end. The federal government was woefully unprepared, both in manpower and ideas, for ensuring that the rights of ex-slaves were respected after the war. Sure, slavery might be technically dead as of April 14, 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, but was the US military there to enforce freedom on the plantations? Largely, no.
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The Black Codes thus intended to trap Black labor in place. The plantation elite’s top goal immediately upon emancipation was to corral Black labor, whose core goal was to avoid the plantation labor system, preferably replacing it with small farms they owned. The Black Codes intended to prevent this. Building upon the slave codes regulating Black behavior, and especially Black movement, before the war, the Black Codes were the South’s statement to the North that the end of the war did not mean the end of white supremacy. Black people would have to show a written contract of employment at the start of each year, ensuring they were laboring for a white employer. At the core of the Mississippi code and copied around the South was the vagrancy provision. “Vagrancy” was a term long used in the United States to crack down on workers not doing what employers or the police wanted them to do. In this case, it meant not working for a white person. Decades later, a vagrancy charge was a great way for authorities to imprison union organizers.
Mississippi did not allow Black people to rent land for themselves. Rather, all Black people in rural areas were required to labor for a white under one-year contracts. They did not have the option to quit working for that white person. If a Black person in the countryside was found not working for a white person, the state would contract that worker out to a private landowner and receive a portion of their wages. If a Black person could not pay high taxes levied on them by the state, they would be charged with vagrancy and the same process would result. As during slavery, any white person could legally arrest any Black person.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/that-time-mississippi-reinvented
You see the Emancipation Proclamation may have freed the slaves in word but not so much in deed.
Some of these ‘Black Codes’ hung around until the 1980s and there are still some that refuse to believe that slavery was all that bad to this day.
Few are taught these parts of the state’s history and that is truly sad.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”