WEBVTT

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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- At the end of the Civil War,
there were great expectations

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that African-Americans
had proven their worth.

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And for a brief moment during
radical reconstruction,

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African-Americans serve
in the state legislatures,

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become members of Congress.

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NARRATOR: But in 1877,
a decade of progress

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came to an abrupt end when the
last remaining federal troops

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were withdrawn from the South.

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- Everything that we
fought for was rolled back.

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It was all rolled back.

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- When you grow up in
the South with Jim Crow,

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everything was segregated,
everything, everything.

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And it was the way of life.

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It's how we grew up.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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NARRATOR: For Americans
in the North and South,

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the abolition of
slavery heralded

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the start of a new era.

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But within months
of the war's end,

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the first laws were
enacted to intimidate

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and obstruct
African-American freedoms.

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- There's this constant
thread of know your place.

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While there may be
constitutional amendments that

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dictate you're free,
we're going to use

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local law and other means to
keep your status at the lowest

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ranking.

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NARRATOR: These laws known
as Black Codes were all

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too similar to the
old slave codes that

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had restricted enslaved people.

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