The Black Codes were legal statutes and constitutional amendments adopted by the former Confederate States after the Civil War that sought to restrict the freedoms of newly free slaves, to ensure a supply into cheap agricultural labor and maintaining a white-dominated hierarchy. (paragraph 1) In the southern states, before the Civil War, they enacted slavery codes to regulate the institution of slavery. And non-slavery Northern states passed laws to limit the political power and social mobility of blacks. (paragraph 2) The Black Codes were adopted after the Civil War and borrowed points from antebellum slavery laws as well as Northern state laws used to regulate free blacks. (paragraph 3) Eventually, the Black Codes were extinguished when Radical Republican Reconstruction efforts began in 1866-1867 with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights legislation. The life of the Black Codes did not have longevity but was significant. (paragraph 3) Although each former Confederate state adopted its own set of codes, all have certain characteristics such that they ...