Black Codes were laws that governed the conduct of African Americans in the United States, particularly in the South, after the Civil War). They were modeled after earlier slave codes and were part of a larger pattern of Democrats trying to maintain political dominance and suppress the newly emancipated African Americans). The Black Codes restricted black peoples right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces). A central element of the Black Codes were vagrancy laws, which criminalized men who were out of work or who were not working at a job whites recognized). Failure to pay a certain tax or to comply with other laws could also be construed as vagrancy). The Black Codes were an overt manifestation of the system of white supremacy that continued to dominate the American South). Reconstruction did away with the Black Codes, but after Reconstruction ended in 1877, many of their provisions were reenacted in the Jim Crow laws, which were not finally done away with until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.