Title: The History of Slave Patrols, Black Codes, and Vagrancy Laws | Facing History and Ourselves
Headings: The History of Slave Patrols, Black Codes, and Vagrancy Laws
The History of Slave Patrols, Black Codes, and Vagrancy Laws
Overview
Historical Context: Black Codes, and Vagrancy Laws
Learn About the Origins of Policing in the United States
Examine Black Codes, Vagrancy Laws, and the Criminalization of Black Life After the Civil War
Additional Resources:
View the next Teaching Idea in this series: Exploring Contemporary Experiences of Policing and Racial Injustice
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Content: The History of Slave Patrols, Black Codes, and Vagrancy Laws | Facing History and Ourselves
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The History of Slave Patrols, Black Codes, and Vagrancy Laws
Last updated April 29, 2021. This is the second Teaching Idea in a series designed to help students think critically about the long and troubling history between law enforcement and Black Americans. Use these Teaching Ideas to help your students bring a historical lens to these complex issues, engage with nuanced sources that represent a range of experiences with policing, and consider ways to build a society that ensures the safety of all people. Overview
Contemporary issues surrounding policing, the criminal justice system, and racial injustice have deep historical roots, and examining even a piece of this history can help students more fully understand how historical legacies shape current events. Many scholars locate the origins of racism in policing—and other forms of bias in the criminal justice system—in the treatment of enslaved people before the Civil War. According to the Equal Justice Initiative article Presumption of Guilt: To this day, we have not adequately confronted the legacy of racial injustice and instead have let it evolve into the widespread presumption that people of color are suspicious, dangerous, and criminal—that young Black men are to be feared, monitored, and even hunted. 1
This Teaching Idea provides students with a brief overview of the history of policing in the early United States and then examines how laws—and the biased enforcement of those laws—were used to control the lives of Black Americans in the South following the Civil War. Historical Context: Black Codes, and Vagrancy Laws
After the Civil War ended slavery in the United States, the same Southerners who led the Confederacy initially controlled Southern State legislatures, where they sought new ways to maintain control over Black people’s lives and labor.