To paraphrase a well-known French saying, “Seek the white man.” Louisiana Police Regulations of Saint Landry Parish Like the Black Codes, police regulations restricted the freedoms and personal autonomy of freedmen after the Civil War in the South. The Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana police regulations offer merely one example of the lengths Southern legislatures went to in preserving as much of the master-slave dynamic as possible. Louisiana possessed a large free black population prior to the Civil War, concentrated primarily in New Orleans, and offered more rights and freedoms to them than many Northern states. A virulent racism still pervaded the state, however, as freedmen were characterized as children in need of care and supervision by White employers, clergymen, and public officials. Some Louisiana politicians desired to expel all Blacks from the state following the war, but a commitment to maintaining as much of the antebellum status quo as possible prevailed. Slavery and the ideology on which it was based had ceased to exist only in name.The regulations strove to hinder freedmens ability to move about freely, binding them as much to the direct oversight and authority of the employer as possible. In many cases the employer was actually the employees former master, effectively negating any real differences from slavery. The regulations sought to limit economic freedom and ensure that each former slave was in constant employment of some White person, therefore effectively proscribing any chance of upward economic mobility and autonomy. In addition, laws enacted to keep freedmen from meeting after sunset and from preaching to congregations of colored people betrayed a deep-seated fear of African-American political and social organization that would pose a threat to White authority and order. blueblood also blue·blood (blbld)n. 1. Noble or aristocratic descent. 2. A member of the aristocracy. blood·line a sequence of direct ancestors especially in a pedigree
Posted on: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 19:10:24 +0000
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