The Black Codes

Reconstruction 360 uses a 360 degree video platform as a storytelling device that lets the audience step inside pivotal Reconstruction events. By clicking on icons within the 360 video the user can access short documentaries that offer the perspectives of multiple characters, historians and descendants. Reconstruction 360 also includes lesson plans, curriculum standards and primary documents.

This module, The Black Codes, deals with the laws passed by southern whites shortly after the Civil War that limited the rights of Black people in an attempt to establish restrictions similar to slavery. 

Explore the 360 Experience
Title:
The Black Codes: Freedman | Reconstruction 360
The Black Codes: Freedman | Reconstruction 360

Video

Grades: 7 8 9 10 11 12

The Black man in this jail cell has been locked up for refusing to sign a labor contract. Under the Black Codes he is considered a vagrant. Freedpeople had to sign labor contracts to work for whites...
The Black Codes: Freedwoman | Reconstrucion 360
The Black Codes: Freedwoman | Reconstrucion 360

Video

Grades: 7 8 9 10 11 12

The wife of the jailed freedman has come to the jail to support her husband in his contract dispute with the white landowner. In 1865 and 1866, following the example of Northern Blacks, freedpeople in...
The Black Codes: Jailer | Reconstruction 360
The Black Codes: Jailer | Reconstruction 360

Video

Grades: 7 8 9 10 11 12

There was little or no universal or public education in the Antebellum South. Only wealthy elites went to school, and most poor whites were illiterate. They remained ignorant of politics at the...
The Black Codes: Labor Contract | Reconstruction 360
The Black Codes: Labor Contract | Reconstruction 360

Video

Grades: 7 8 9 10 11 12

The Freedmen’s Bureau helped create labor contracts that were supposed to be fair to both parties, but in many cases established conditions not much better than slavery. This system became known as...
The Black Codes: Landowner | Reconstruction 360
The Black Codes: Landowner | Reconstruction 360

Video

Grades: 7 8 9 10 11 12

Like most former Confederates, this landowner resents the authority of U.S. Army officers and the Freedmen’s Bureau. Fearful that their agricultural economy would collapse without the free labor of...
The Black Codes: The Pink Palace | Reconstruction 360
The Black Codes: The Pink Palace | Reconstruction 360

Video

Grades: 7 8 9 10 11 12

This scene was shot inside the Orangeburg County Jail, also known as the Pink Palace, in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The jail was built in 1860 with offices on the first floor and cells for prisoners...