Rand Abdel-Fattah

While slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that same year, it didn't mean the violent surveillance of newly freed Black citizens would end.

In fact, within months of the end of the Civil War, Southern states began passing laws that would later be called Black Codes.

We'll talk more about the Civil War next week.

But for now, you should know that these laws essentially allowed white people to continue to control many aspects of Black people's lives.

And the way they accomplished this was to take advantage of a loophole in the 13th Amendment.

So after emancipation, the slave patrols are morphing into something new.

But their mission essentially stayed the same.

The brutality unleashed by the Ku Klux Klan was so bad that the federal government ended up occupying former Confederate states to help guarantee the safety of Black people.

Congress passed amendments to ensure equal rights and voting for Black citizens.

But even with those measures, the southern states created what are known as Jim Crow laws.

Jim Crow, along with the KKK, pushed millions of Black citizens to flee the South to northern cities, places such as New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia, in what would become known as the Great Migration.

When Black Southerners made it to northern cities, they encountered a new and more professional form of policing.

The police forces in the north, modeled after Europe, emphasized three things.

Crime prevention and control of communities, particularly immigrant communities.

Strong visibility in everyday life by patrolling the streets.

and militaristic structure, with things like uniforms, rank designations, and a code of command and discipline.

For some Black people, their experiences at the hands of police in northern progressive cities would rival the terror they experienced in the South.

That's it for this week's episode of America in Pursuit from NPR and ThruLine.

If you want to hear the full-length ThruLine episode about the history of policing, check out Policing America.

And make sure to join us next Tuesday when we go to the center of the U.S.