The correct answer is B) Black Codes enacted in the South.
The Fourteenth Amendment was the federal government's response to the Black Codes enacted in the South.
In the history of racism in the United States, the Black Codes were a series of legislation passed in the Southern states in the mid-1800s to limit the freedom of African Americans. These Black Codes only replaced the slave codes that existed before the US Civil War.
The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution balanced the power in the US in that the federal government had the power to protect the rights of people in all of the states of the Union. Indeed, the Amendment granted citizenship and civil rights to former blacks that became free when the Union Army defeated the Confederated Army in the Civil War, and according to the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln.