the meaning of "rather than name"

[kjc0123]

What is the meaning of "rather than name" in the following sentence?

The first Jim Crow law was passed in 1723, when blacks in the state of Virginia were stripped of the right to vote and own property. The later passage of Black Codes, which attempted to return freed slaves to bondage in fact, rather than name, by Southern legislatures immediately after the American Civil War led to the policy of Reconstruction, in which the federal government intervened to protect the rights conferred on black Americans by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875.

[bernardo]

It means that there was no specific law to say that slaves were in bondage, but that the conditions in which they were kept and employed made them like that in practice.

[Kingaroo]

"In fact rather than name" means "in practice, without calling it that."