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'Black Codes In Wells-Barnett's The Red Record'

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About 4.4 million slaves were owned in 1860 and less than half of them were from the South. Slaves did not have any rights and were often considered the property of their owners: they could not own property, killing a slave was not considered murder, and serious offenses would result in branding, prison or even death. After abolishing slavery in 1865, most of the Southern slave owners were angry that they had lost their workers. The elitist began creating a series of Black Codes. The codes, known as laws, were aimed at taking advantage of the freed African Americans financial problems. If and when an African American was arrested for a crime, they would automatically receive a prison sentence that would require that they pay a bail. Since …show more content…

In Wells-Barnett’s The Red Record (1895), lynching statistics show that many African Americans were accused of attempted crimes such as barn burning, robbery and murder. The white man began to invent accusations against African Americans and brutality was becoming a problem: African Americans were whipped, exiled, shot and hung whenever the white man pleased. African Americans were even killed for a crime someone else committed, a jury acquitted them and they were a scapegoat. Wells-Barnett even lost friends due to the fact that they were black and even had her own life threatened because she had tried to help them. In Mob Rules in New Orleans, Robert Charles was killed for killing a white cop in self defense. Charles was hunted down by a mob and after being shot and killed, his body was shot, kicked and even beaten so badly that there was no resemblance of a human …show more content…

In the story, a mild-mannered slave named Jim runs away from Miss Watson, his owner so that he can flee slavery and not be separated from his wife and children. He forms a friendship with Huck (whom isn’t sure if he should tell on Jim or not) as they make their way down the Mississippi River. Twain’s labels come into context when Jim realizes that “slave” was the label he could out run but “African American” was not. Jim spends the entire story running away from being a slave and then he finally realized that he couldn’t stop being African American. When Tom Sawyer is shot, Jim understands that he must sacrifice his freedom to save Tom. However, all is not lost when they find out that Jim has been free the entire time as Miss Watson had updated her will to include the freeing of

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