- tions in the matter of punishment passed away, as did the
other "Black Laws," in 1866.
There are certain statutes as to crimes which, though they do not mention the Negro in so many words, are thought by many to have peculiar application to him. The vagrancy laws of the Southern States, for instance, have been considered as directed primarily against Negroes. Some of the States made it a crime for one to sell cotton in bags between certain hours of the night. This was probably a result of the habit attributed to the Negro of hiding cotton in the jambs of the fences and woods in the daytime to take to the cross-roads store at night. Missouri,[67] in 1903, made chicken-stealing a felony punishable by imprisonment for five years, or a fine of two hundred dollars. The next year, Kentucky[68] passed the following statute: "That if any person shall steal chickens, turkeys, ducks, or other fowls of the value of two dollars, or more, he shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than one nor more than five years. Whether this is an indirect race distinction or not, the writer will not take it upon himself to decide.
Some of the States have enacted statutes to the effect that the punishment for the members of all races shall be the same for the same offence. Delaware[69] did so in 1867. In Mississippi,[70] in 1865, Negroes were given the right to procure the arrest of a white person; but, if the arrest were false and malicious, the Negro must pay all the costs, be fined not over fifty dollars, and imprisoned not over twenty days. In 1867, however, a statute said that Negroes must have the same punishment as white people. South Carolina,[71] as has been seen, re-
