Name___________________
Roots Movie-4
Date:____________
1. Describe what happened in today’s movie viewing?
2. Why were slaves not permitted to learn to read or write?
3. Why do you think there were no major slave revolts in the South?
4.What did you like best about the movie today? Why?
5. What did you like least about the movie today? Why?
6. What were you thinking as you finished watching the film?
7. Read the following article entitled Slave Codes by Cathy Pearl?
Answer questions A-D based on the article on the last page.
Slave Codes
By Cathy Pearl
1
Slave owners did anything that they could to keep slaves from running away.
They did not want the slaves to do or learn anything that might help them. One
way the owners did this was with laws called slave codes.
2
Slave codes were laws that were passed in states in the South. The laws tried to
keep slaves from running away or fighting back. Each state had different laws. But
all of the laws had parts that were the same.
3
In the laws, the color line was very clear. If you had one African American
person in your ancestry, you were black. It didn't matter how long ago that person
had lived.
4
Whether or not you were a slave depended on what your mother was. If your
mother was a slave, you were a slave. It didn't matter if your father was a free man.
This made slavery permanent for any slave family. A child born to a slave was
always a slave.
5
Slaves had very few legal rights. If slaves were badly treated, they couldn't
bring charges against their owners. In court, they couldn't talk about a white man.
They couldn't own any property. If they were attacked, the slaves could not hit a
white person.
6
Slaves could not gather in a group larger than three people. This was to keep
them from making plans to fight back or to run away. They weren't allowed to
leave their owner's land. If the owner let them leave, the slaves needed to carry
cards or pieces of paper that said they had the owner's permission.
7
Slave codes made it a crime for slaves to learn how to read or write. This code
wasn't always followed. There were women who would teach the slaves in the
house how to read. This had to be done secretly.
8
Marriages are a type of contract. Slaves could not make contracts under the
slave codes. This meant that the marriages were not legal in the eyes of the law. A
marriage did not help protect the slaves. It also did not keep a married slave from
being sold to other owners.
9
Owners hoped all of these laws would make it hard for slaves to escape or fight
back. By not being able to read, the owners thought it would be harder for slaves to
find help if they ran away. They thought the slaves would not be able to read a
train schedule or use a map. This would make it harder for the slaves to go North.
10
Slaves were made to follow the slave codes in many different ways. They
could be whipped or branded. They were even locked in jails. The slaves could
also be killed, but this didn't happen very often. Slaves were property. Owners did
not kill the slaves because they would lose money.
11
Slave codes were not always enforced. But if there were signs of problems,
the state would be told. The slave codes would then be enforced to stop any
problems before they started.
12
All of the slave codes had parts that talked about freed slaves. The codes had
rules about how the freed slaves moved around and even what kind of jobs that
they could have. Many of them had to leave the state after they were freed. Slave
owners didn't want their slaves to get any ideas about freedom.
13
The slave codes were in effect until the Civil War. After the Civil War, new
laws were made to keep African Americans from having the same rights as white
men and women. It would take almost one hundred more years for African
Americans to gain all of the rights that other citizens in the United States had.
Answer the following questions after reading Slave
Codes by Cathy Pearl:
A. Were slaves allowed to learn to read and write? Explain your answer.
B. How could slaves be made to follow the codes?
C. Why couldn’t slaves gather in large groups?
D. Would a child born to a slave be free?