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During Reconstruction, slavery was gone, black Americans were

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gaining all kinds of new rights and the South was full of rainbows and unicorns.

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Yeah not so much, something more sinister was lurking [Unicorn flying over a rainbow falls out the sky]

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under the surface of things. Many southern land owners, were none too pleased, with

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the fact that they had lost their precious slaves. Enter the Black Codes, [Man in a top hat looking unhappy]

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first passed by Mississippi and South Carolina in 1865. They were basically

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policies that walked a lot like slavery and talked a lot like slavery, but [man sweeping while two people look on]

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weren't technically slavery. The Black Codes included policies like, making

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black workers stay until the end of their contract, or risk losing all of

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their wages, or making up about a million and a half ways to label black people, as [Guy looking upset]

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criminals, so they could be put back into forced labor. Yep, turns out that forced

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labor thing, was a massive loophole in the 13th amendment. Basically slavery got

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its hair cut and dyed, grew a mustache, put on some glasses and changed its name [man changing his appearance]

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to Black Codes. Well Mississippi and South Carolina were only the first. In 1865 and

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1866 almost all the other southern states, decided to be copycats. Why is it [Cats appear with the names of the other states]

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that bad ideas always seem to be spread the fastest. Well different states, of

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course, found different ways to be jerks to black people. But there were certain

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types of laws that everybody thought were just swell. For example vagrancy and [Man hitting a black guy with a baseball bat]

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labor contract laws, were a major hit. Any black person who broke their labor

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contract, or was just too noticeably free in public, would be in some serious [man behind bars]

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trouble. They could be beaten, arrested and forced into unpaid labor. Unpaid

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labor? Seems like, we know another word for that. What is it? What is it? Oh yah,

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slavery. And guess who was in charge of enforcing these laws?

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Yeah the Popo, the fuzz, the coppers, the bobbies and you can bet they were all [cops policing]

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white. Republicans in Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, without Johnson's

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approval. They required the South to ratify the 14th amendment, with the

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reconstruction Act of 1867. The 14th amendment took the content of the Civil [Act being written]

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Rights Act, which guaranteed equal rights and made it really permanent, by putting

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it in the Constitution. Then the real zinger came with the 15th amendment of

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1870. Which said no state government could prevent black people from voting.

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We're looking at you South Carolina. But white supremacist in the South, weren't [two mean beating each other with bags of dirt]

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about to get beaten, that easily. They had already passed Black Codes, so

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they could have slavery, without the label. So well, why would they stop now?

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Enter the Ku Klux Klan, aka the KKK. Wow a lot of K's. They were violent, they were

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white supremacist and they had a thing for setting crosses on fire. [Video of a KKK meeting]

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Well the KKK used vigilante tactics, to prevent freed people from taking

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advantage of their new rights. Sadly the guys in the pointy white hoods,

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were super effective. When all federal troops were finally removed from the [civil war troops moving across US map]

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south in 1877, little had changed in the lives of African Americans. The road to

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true equality was going to be long and treacherous and unfortunately burning [Car driving through burning crosses]

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crosses lit the way. What does the cross ever do to you KKK? [KKK meeting]

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