WELL, WELL, NOW! Didn’t see this in the Speilberg Movie

IN HONOR OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH… The Illinois Black Code….

Illinois was “almost a slave state” and had “a slave code that was harsher and wider in scope than some of those in the South.” Robert P. Howard (129-131)

The man Lincoln called his “special friend” Ward H. Lamon said that the Ill. Black Code, “was of the most preposterous and cruel severity, a code that would have been a disgrace to a slave state and was simply and infamy in a free one. It borrowed the provisions of the most revolting laws known among men, for exiling, selling, beating, bedeviling and torturing Negroes, whether bond or free.” They were not repealed until after the war and Lincoln never said a word against them. My my my….what they don’t teach in schools. 

Blacks had no legal rights a white man was bound to respect and it was a crime for them to settle in Illinois unless they could prove their freedom and post a $1000 bond. Any black man found without a certificate of freedom was considered a runaway and could be apprehended and auctioned off by the sheriff to pay the cost of his confinement. None of this seemed to bother Lincoln. 

The architect of the Negro Exclusion Law, undoubtedly the most severe anti-Negro measure passed by a state was John A. Logan (future Lincoln appointee Union General and Chicago CW icon). 

“punishment enough for Blacks to live among such cruel, inhospitable beings as the residents of Illinois, not to mention the additional burden of having to live under such a law.” Horace Greeley

“an act of special and savage ruthlessness.” New Orleans Bee

Oh how they like to hide the truth, so as to shame you and discredit your ancestors. 

source: Forced into Glory by Lerone Bennett Jr.