Segregation after the Civil War

As we all know slavery was very commom in North America during the age of colony. People from Africa were brutally kidnapped and transported to North America to become slaves. Because of growing trade, industry and self-sufficiency in the North, the slavery there gradually started to fade. After the Civil War the slavery was gone in the North, but it remained in the South. As the South was occupied by the North for some time, the North made efforts to give the blacks in the South their civil rights, protect them and provide them with skills so they could start new lives as free and independent people. But this was not easy, as the South had a lot to deal with after the war already, and the whites wanted to keep the power. When the Northern troops grew tired of the effort and the Southern states regained self-gouvernment, they gradually separated the races and took away the civil rights of the blacks. This was the beginning of a new period of rasism, which was going to last for many years.

The segregation that followed was, in addition to the will to keep control, based on fear. The whites were afraid of a free black population and what the consequences of it might become in the society. They imagined that the blacks would rape white women, terrorice their former masters and ruin the economy. The Southern legislatures therefore made laws to control the African American people. The laws, or the Black Codes as they are called, meant several limilitations for the black people. Everyone of them had to sign labor contracts, they were not allowed to own land, whites could physically abuse them as much as they wanted whitout getting punishments, and interracial marriage was forbidden.