Final answer:
Laws regarding race, such as anti-manumission laws and 'Jim Crow' laws, severely impacted both enslaved individuals and free people of color, defining social hierarchy based on skin color and maintaining racial barriers.
Step-by-step explanation:
Laws and beliefs around race had profound impacts on both enslaved people and free people of color in the United States. During the nineteenth century, southern states began making manumission illegal and implemented laws that stripped free Black people of basic rights, such as testifying against White individuals in court or choosing employment freely. In Virginia, there were even efforts to force free Black individuals to leave the state, reflecting the harsher conditions in the Upper South compared to the Deep South, where the institution of slavery was still economically strong.
Virginia's law dictated that the condition of being enslaved was inherited from an enslaved mother, creating a self-perpetuating system of enslavement. This, along with other laws, facilitated the maintenance of strict racial barriers where skin color denoted a deep societal divide. After the abolition of slavery, 'Jim Crow' laws continued to enforce labor domination and social subordination of Black people, affecting African American family dynamics and economic conditions by introducing property laws and measures to control Black labor.