Ohio Black Code

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: Typically, the phrase Black Code is used to refer to the legal and social system that kept African Americans in subservient positions in the South after the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Using this document in connection with the discussion surrounding the Ku Klux Klan Act, discuss the similarities and differences between the post-Reconstruction Black Codes and the Ohio Black Code.
• 2.: In what way did the attitudes of the southern slave states makes themselves felt in Ohio, a nominally free state?
• 3.: While the Ohio Black Code legislated the second-class status of African Americans, it at least afforded some measure of protection to African Americans and was not as severe as the laws in other states. Which provisions of the Ohio Black Code represented at least some measure of accommodation to African Americans? What steps were taken by individuals to lessen the severity of the Ohio Black Code?
• 4.: Do you agree with Eugene Berwanger’s thesis that midwesterners wanted to isolate slavery in the South because in that way African Americans would eventually disappear—thus suggesting that racism was as endemic in the North as it was in the South?
• 5.: What effect did the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 have in undermining the security of African Americans, despite the repeal of the Ohio Black Code in 1849?