Final answer:
The Black Codes are the set of laws that paved the way for Jim Crow laws, maintaining White supremacy post-Civil War and restricting African Americans' civil rights, ultimately creating a legal framework for segregation.
Step-by-step explanation:
The set of laws considered to have paved the way for Jim Crow laws is A) the Black Codes. Post-Civil War, the former Confederate states employed these codes to maintain White supremacy in the absence of slavery. The detrimental societal shift enforced by Black Codes led to the first Civil Rights Act of 1866 and subsequently to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Supreme Court's decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case upheld the 'separate but equal' doctrine, which entrenched legal segregation and justified the extensive proliferation of Jim Crow laws across the South.
The Black Codes restricted African Americans' rights, such as voting and serving on juries. The enactment of these codes reflected an intense desire to restore the racial hierarchy that slavery had established. Despite the Civil Rights Amendments and attempts by federal legislation to protect the rights of African Americans, these codes laid the groundwork for the de jure segregation that would mark the Jim Crow era.
In practice, Jim Crow laws emerged as a formalization of the segregation and disenfranchisement that the Black Codes had begun. Over time, these laws created a comprehensive system of segregation, impacting every aspect of life in the American South. It would take many decades and a sustained civil rights movement to dismantle the legal and social structures that the Black Codes helped to create.