This picture depicts a sign enforcing Jim Crow laws separating white and colored drinking fountains.
The Black Codes and Jim Crow laws where both ways the South expressed racism towards colored people during and after Reconstruction. They where ways the South could oppress and punish the freed slaves after loosing the Civil War. Although both where aimed to restrict the colored, they where also very different. The black codes of the South took the rights of African Americans that where guaranteed to everyone in the Constitution. They took away the right for blacks to bear arms and forced them sign contracts forcing them to work a certain amount of hours a week. This ensured that the African Americans remained in the work force and continued to work in almost the same conditions of slavery. Jim Crow laws on the other hand where based on the Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling of separate but equal. They forced segregation between colored people and whites to the point that they could not share the same bathrooms or water fountains. Many people in the South still thought colored people to be inferior and did not want to share public facilities with them.
Racism has been prominent throughout history and here is one of the clearest and most repulsive examples of it. The idea of forcing a whole race of people to be segregated and claim that as long as it is “equal” it is justified is disgusting. It often was not equal because facilities made for whites where often higher quality and better than the facilities made for color people. The schools where not as nice for the colored children as it was for the white children, which held back younger generations because they could not get the best education offered. Racism has always been around and I don’t believe that it will stop until all the races mix into one. When nations are at war, people belonging to opposing nations living within the U.S. are discriminated and it is written off as patriotism. The black codes where even worse because they did not try to hide the inequality of them at all. There was no counterarguments saying that it was “equal” because they where unapologetic when it came to being racism. They simply took away the rights of a whole race of people without offering any explanation besides the idea that whites where superior to colored people. Racism and discrimination is still present in America now as it is in our history, and I believe that it will be until we can unite into one human race and one country.