King Louis XIV
The Black codes were created in 1685 by the French King Louis XIV as a precautionary measure to prevent enslaved Black people from harming their masters. The Code lasted for 100 years, but it evolved into laws that would restrict marriage and mesegenation, and also serve as gun control for many of the non-white people in Louisiana.
The Black Codes and Interracial RelationshipsThe codes were composed of 60 different articles that were created primarily for the French colonies in the West Indies/Caribbean. The colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) was the first to implement such laws that would further control their Black population. In 1687, the codes required enslaved Black people as well as their masters to be Roman Catholic, and the social status of the mother determined the social status of her children. The codes emphasized the social and sexual protocol between Blacks and whites and did not forbid the relationships. For Example in Article IX:
Free men who shall have one or more children during concubinage with their slaves, together with their masters who accepted it, shall each be fined two thousand pounds of sugar. If they are the masters of the slave who produced said children, we desire, in addition to the fine, that the slave and the children be removed and that she and they be sent to work at the hospital, never to gain their freedom. We do not expect however for the present article to be applied when the man was not married to another person during his concubinage with this slave, who he should then marry according to the accepted rites of the Church. In this way she shall then be freed, the children becoming free and legitimate. . . .
Even though there were interracial “relationships,” one would have to assume that the enslaved person did not have the right or agency to turn down their masters’ sexual advances. So the relationship was just an extension of slavery and was rape.
The Condition of Black People
Life under the codes made the daily conditions for Black people unlivable. In Saint-Domingue, there were laws restricting economic movement, self-defense and social mobility. To be an enslaved person under the codes was to be treated like property or a pet.
In Article XXXI, legal rights were removed from Black people:
Slaves shall not be a party, either in court or in a civil matter, either as a litigant or as a defendant, or as a civil party in a criminal matter. And compensation shall be pursued in criminal matters for insults and excesses that have been committed against slaves. . . .
In an attempt to prevent rebellions and violence, enslaved people who wanted to free themselves could not. Article XXXIII reads:
The slave who has struck his master in the face or has drawn blood, or has similarly struck the wife of his master, his mistress, or their children, shall be punished by death. . . .
The laws were barbaric in principal and in practice. Article XXXVIII shows the savage treatment inflicted on runaway enslaved people:
The fugitive slave who has been on the run for one month from the day his master reported him to the police, shall have his ears cut off and shall be branded with a fleur de lys on one shoulder. If he commits the same infraction for another month, again counting from the day he is reported, he shall have his hamstring cut and be branded with a fleur de lys on the other shoulder. The third time, he shall be put to death.
LouisianaIn 1724, the Black Codes made it to Louisiana. It created a caste system that would “organize” its mixed society and alienate, subjugate and disenfranchise the Black population. The codes were in effect from 1724 to 1803. During that time Black people could not own anything that could be used as a weapon such as a cane or stick. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the same fear of Black people prompted the planters to disarm the free Black militia. They also did not want Blacks to have positions of authority that required guns.
The codes also went as far to eliminate all forms of integration. For example in Article VI of the code, “[the French crown] forbid our white subjects, of both sexes, to marry with the blacks, under the penalty of being fined and subjected to some other arbitrary punishment,” which the original code allowed.
Quadroon Balls
Under the Black codes in Louisiana, mixed-raced people, or mulattoes, were treated better than darker skinned Black people. This skin differentiation created a long-lasting division that ultimately damaged the Black community. Many white males found mixed-race women desirable. In 1800s New Orleans, there were frequent Quadroon Balls that served as a meeting place for white men to pick and arrange relationships with mulatto women. When the man had made his choice, he met the woman and her mother to offer an arrangement, a placage, in which he agreed to maintain the woman in a certain style and provide for any children who might be born of the union, according to writer and historian Obiagele Lake.
The Black Codes After 1865
After the Civil War, the condition of Black people was not any different. The codes in Louisiana were still influenced by the original codes in 1685. Southern states adopted laws that would still keep the white powers-that-be on top. Essentially, free Black people were unable to advance in society because of these codes. For example:
Section 4. Every Negro is required to be in the regular service of some white person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conduct of said Negro. But said employer or former owner may permit said Negro to hire his own time by special permission in writing, which permission shall not extend over seven days at any one time.
Section 5. No public meetings or congregations of Negroes shall be allowed within said parish after sunset; but such public meetings and congregations may be held between the hours of sunrise and sunset, by the special permission in writing of the captain of patrol, within whose beat such meetings shall take place.
Even though Black people were free, they did not have full protection under the law or the ability to express that freedom without white supervision.
The Strange Case of Susie Guillory Phipps
In 1977, Susie Guillory Phipps, a white Louisiana woman, applied for a birth certificate to discover that the state Bureau of Vital Statistics had her down as ”colored.” This made her upset and outraged to such claims, so she took the matter to court in 1982. The state traced her genealogy back 222 years, to a Black woman named Margarita, Mrs. Phipps’ great-great-great-great grandmother. Her great-great-great-great grandfather was a white planter named John Gregoire Guillory according to the New York Times reported in 1982.
Louisiana law since 1970 has held that if a person had 1/32 of ”Negro blood,” the person was considered Black. Before 1970 ”a trace” of Negro ancestry made a person Black in the eyes of the state.
