Black Codes were laws enacted by Southern states in the United States after the Civil War, around 1865 and 1866, designed to restrict the freedom and rights of Black Americans, especially newly emancipated freedmen. These laws were intended to maintain white supremacy by controlling the labor, movement, and social status of Black people, effectively curtailing their economic, political, and social freedoms despite the abolition of slavery. Black Codes often included vagrancy laws that allowed authorities to arrest and force African Americans into labor for minor infractions, continued legal discrimination including denying voting rights, jury service, and interracial marriage, and restricted civil rights like carrying firearms and testifying in court against whites. They marked a legal effort to replace slavery with other forms of racial and economic control.