This movement became a social rebellion against racism enforced by Jim …show more content…
The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited discrimina- tion in voting rights of citizens on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.1 Though slavery was abolished, it was replaced with Black Codes, restricting the natural rights of black people. The Codes were established to make black people the inferior race and to reduce the influence of freed blacks on those who were enslaved. Some of the laws included restricting their right to vote, bearing a weapon, and learning to read and write. The motivation behind cre- ating the Black Codes was to preserve slavery. Disobeying one of these laws lead to a person be- ing put in jail. In an effort to unify the state, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act in 1867. The purpose of this Act was to change the United States from a country that was, half slave and half free, to one which constitutionally guaranteed liberty to the entire population. This included former slaves and their descendants. With that came the disestablishment of the Black Codes. Racism and discrimination still remained. When Reconstruction ended, Southerners created new laws which strongly enforced the racial divide between blacks and whites. These laws were called the Jim Crow laws. The term comes from a fictional white character who, in blackface, and depicted what white people thought a uneducated black person was like. During the start of the Harlem Renaissance, white supremacy was rampant in the