How did black codes affect African-Americans in Louisiana?

When slavery ended in the United States, freedom still eluded African Americans who were contending with the repressive set of laws known as the black codes. Widely enacted throughout the South following the Civil War—a period called Reconstruction—these laws both limited the rights of Black people and exploited them as a labor source.

In fact, life after bondage didn’t differ much from life during bondage for the African Americans subjected to the black codes. This was by design, as slavery had been a multi-billion dollar enterprise, and the former Confederate states sought a way to continue this system of subjugation.

“They may have lost the war, but they’re not going to lose power civically and socially,” says M. Keith Claybrook Jr., an assistant professor in the Department of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach. “So, the black codes were an attempt to restrict and limit freedom.”

Losing the Civil War meant the South had little choice but to recognize the Reconstruction-era policies that abolished slavery. By using the law to deny African Americans the opportunities and privileges that white people enjoyed, however, the one-time Confederacy could keep these newly liberated Americans in virtual bondage.

(source: https://www.history.com/news/black-codes-reconstruction-slavery)

the underground railroad (apocope of the metropolitan railroad) is a system of urban trains located within a city and its metropolitan area. it is characterized for being a massive transport of passengers in the big cities, uniting diverse zones and their environs, with high capacity and frequency and in segregated form to other systems of transport. metropolitan railroads are built underground or on the surface, although most systems use mixed models where sections are combined in both modalities.

1 - as a result, the metro tends to reduce car travel for two reasons: first, due to the greater transfer of users from the car and, second, due to the reduction in the acquisition of cars in homes located in sectors near the stations of the metro.

2 -the metro allows to contribute effectively to the achievement of all the objectives of an urban development policy: it improves the efficiency of the city's economy by reducing travel costs and also generates a higher level of activities in the city center, taking advantage of of the agglomeration economies.

3 -it is a clean means of transport, since it uses renewable energy (usually electricity), taking care of the environment and avoiding excessive pollution.

during the debate over his landmark energy policy proposal, president jimmy carter failed to consult one of the most powerful senators, louisiana’s russell long, who would have a big say over whether the legislation moved through the upper chamber. this was classic carter. with a strong distaste for congressional politics, the president simply refused to do what most other presidents would consider routine, such as courting key senators. long became so irate with the president that when he was finally invited to a white house dinner, he stood up to ask a question and, before doing so, proceeded to sarcastically introduce himself: “i’m russell long, chairman of the senate finance committee.”

this interaction is a revealing moment in stuart e. eizenstat’s fascinating new history of carter’s presidency. the former peanut farmer from georgia was a president who, according to conventional wisdom, didn’t care much for party politics; nonetheless, in eizenstat’s view, carter’s legacy on domestic and foreign policy has been vastly underappreciated. the author paints carter as a “bold and determined” leader who bravely attacked the challenges of his time. eizenstat goes so far as to argue that carter might very well be the most successful one-term president in american history.