The Black Codes were not written by a single person or author; they were created and passed by white‑controlled state legislatures in the former Confederate states right after the U.S. Civil War, mainly in 1865–1866. Different states had their own versions, so many politicians, lawyers, and local elites contributed to drafting and enacting them, rather than one identifiable writer.

What the Black Codes Were

  • The Black Codes were state and local laws designed to control and limit the freedom of newly emancipated Black Americans after slavery was abolished.
  • They grew out of earlier “slave codes” and tried to preserve white supremacy and cheap Black labor despite formal emancipation.

Who Actually Drafted Them

  • In general, ex‑Confederate politicians, white planters, and allied lawyers sitting in the reconstructed Southern state legislatures drafted these laws.
  • For example, in South Carolina, provisional governor Benjamin F. Perry commissioned lawyers Armistead Burt and David Wardlaw, with assistance from Edmund Rhett, to draft that state’s Black Codes, which the legislature then adopted in 1865.
  • In Mississippi, a state Committee on Emancipation and Freedmen wrote the set of laws that became the state’s Black Codes in November 1865.

Why There Is No Single “Author”

  • Each Southern state wrote its own Black Codes, often modeled on older slave codes, so there was no single text or unified author like a modern book or report.
  • These laws were part of a broader political effort by white Southern Democrats and ex‑Confederates to maintain political dominance and racial control after the Civil War.

In short: asking “who wrote the Black Codes” is like asking “who wrote Jim Crow laws” — they were produced by many lawmakers and legal drafters across multiple states, not one individual.

TL;DR:
No single person wrote the Black Codes. They were drafted and passed between 1865–1866 by white‑dominated Southern state legislatures—often ex‑Confederate politicians and lawyers like Armistead Burt, David Wardlaw, and others on special committees in states such as South Carolina and Mississippi.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.