Speaker 1: On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 1: I have a question, have you ever seen a no
Speaker 1: trespassing sign? Did you know they were rooted in slavery?
Speaker 1: Because I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't know. Maybe you didn't. I didn't know. I
Speaker 2: didn't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe you didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't know. All right, so let's talk into a
Speaker 2: tom machine.
Speaker 1: We're going to go all the way to the end
Speaker 1: of the Civil War. Okay, black people are free technically,
Speaker 1: but we still can't vote. So the white people of
Speaker 1: the time vote a bunch of white people in office,
Speaker 1: and the first laws they make are no trespassing laws.
Speaker 2: And why did they make these laws?
Speaker 1: Well, it was an effort for white land owners to
Speaker 1: disadvantage black workers. See if you go back to season one,
Speaker 1: if I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. Right here
Speaker 1: on the Black Effect Podcast network, we talked about down
Speaker 1: in Charleston, South Carolina, where I was educated, on different plantations,
Speaker 1: and the reality is the white landowners, they just owned
Speaker 1: the land, but they didn't know how to cultivate anything
Speaker 1: on the land.
Speaker 2: Black folk, Oh.
Speaker 1: We could survive maybe, I mean growing our own fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables, catching rabbits and catching fish. Bo. Wait, if
Speaker 1: you don't have any land, Now you're trespassing. And what's
Speaker 1: the penalty for trespassing. Well, usually it was astronomical finds
Speaker 1: that poor black people just couldn't afford. So what did
Speaker 1: the white lawmakers of the time implement, you know what,
Speaker 1: new laws and new rules that said that white people
Speaker 1: could sell you off to other white people for the
Speaker 1: amount of months that it would take for you to
Speaker 1: pay off the fine. So there would be auctions at
Speaker 1: the courthouse that were very, very identical to the auctions
Speaker 1: that were taking place ten to fifteen years earlier Indian
Speaker 1: slave periods. But now instead of enslaved individuals being auctioned off,
Speaker 1: they were criminals, you know, for trespassing. Simply put, no
Speaker 1: trespassing signs were designed to confine negroes. It was a
Speaker 1: very easy way for white folks to continue the traditions
Speaker 1: of those enslaved periods. But now under the guise of
Speaker 1: new laws, they even had black codes where you could
Speaker 1: be arrested for not having a job, even if you
Speaker 1: didn't need a job. If a black person worked for
Speaker 1: a white person, he still had to call him master.
Speaker 1: They would have to get written permission in order to
Speaker 1: leave these black codeses in Mississippi, South Carolina.
Speaker 2: That Jim Crow South.
Speaker 1: So yes, once upon a time in America people were
Speaker 1: free to roam around as they pleased.
Speaker 2: And then came the Civil War in eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. No,