He was compelled to work under a series of labor laws applicable only to his own race.

The laws of vagrancy were so changed as, in many of their provisions, to apply only to him, and under their operation all freedom of movement and transit was denied.

The liberty to sell his time at a fair market rate was destroyed by the interposition of apprentice laws.

Avenues of usefulness and skill in which he might specially excel were closed against him lest he should compete with white men.

In short his liberty in all directions was so curtailed that it was a bitter mockery to refer to him in the statutes as a "freedman." The truth was, that his liberty was merely of form and not of fact, and the slavery which was abolished by the organic law of a Nation was now to be revived by the enactments of a State.
Some of these enactments were peculiarly offensive, not to say atrocious.