SELLEST OSAST
The Code - Code Black
Introduction to the Podcast
Hi Guys. Those of you who know me, know me primarily as a musical theatre performer but for the past few years I’ve taken some time to search out and read over the laws, ordinances and regulations that make up the infamous Black Codes.
I wanted to read the Black Codes for three reasons:
Number One: I had many questions about why for years Ive seen (no matter where I was in the continental U.S.) so many destitute African Americans ( all too often denigrated by practically everyone) adrift in the richest country in the world.
The second: is while I enjoy a somewhat comfortable and insulated - off and on - life as a performer acting out dramas, I too often find myself in places where real life tragedies where happening. I was in Florida when Trevon Martin was killed, in St Louis just after Michael Brown was killed, in Baltimore a few days after Freddie Gray died. I spent a lot of time in Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed. Months in Louisville where Breanna Taylor died. I was in New York when Eric Garner died and Amadou Diallo lost his life to a hail of bullets because he was brandishing a wallet. All of these deaths were questionable.
And this is not a rant against the police, I have many members of my family that are police officers or were. And many that are career military.
Be that as it may, this country has baked into its fiber philosophies of position and caste that are difficult to ignore. And reading through the Black Codes you get an idea of where these ideas come from and why and how they have remained so prevalent in our society, until today.
But continuing on with my reasons for doing this…
The third reason is actually a series of crumbs dropped by family members over the years, a comment by my paternal grandfather when I was a boy so odd I never forgot it, a story my godfather told about his favorite car and a couple of facts about my maternal grandparents that were the definition of lifting your self up by your bootstraps. And my father, I was 14 as we drove through Athens GA on our way to the Atlanta Airport for me to get back to school. Thinking about the hours I would spend in the airport I asked to stop at the U of GA Boodle the Bulldog… that’s when he shared a story that opened my eyes to a world I thank my stars I only experience in some peoples inebriated smirks or side comments.
I guess these are the stories that have beensnoozing in the section of the brain where episodic memoriesare formed and catalogued for access at a later date. It’s my version of “My big covid19 summer hippocampus vacation. “
Clearly I am not a historian or lawyer or brain surgeon and cannot professionally draw a straight line from the first of the Black codes in the mid 1600’s to attitudes today - but I do see a pattern, and once you hear them you may see one as well. Not only in the too often videoed aggressive treatment of African Americans by law enforcement but in less broadcast areas of education, healthcare, employment, finance and housing.
The laws I’ll read are varied, some are efficient and direct. While others are sophisticated with incredibly tortured logic, but most are simply brutal, demeaning and destructive...
