![1943 Colored Waiting Room Sign](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/1943_Colored_Waiting_Room_Sign.jpg)
In the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
,
racial segregation
Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
is the systematic separation of facilities and services such as
housing
Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether it ...
,
healthcare
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
,
employment
Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any othe ...
, and
transportation
Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, ...
on
racial grounds. The term is mainly used in reference to the legally or socially enforced separation of
African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
from
whites
White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view.
Description of populations as " ...
, but it is also used in reference to the separation of other
ethnic minorities
The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
from majority and mainstream communities. While mainly referring to the physical separation and provision of separate facilities, it can also refer to other manifestations such as prohibitions against
interracial marriage
Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities.
In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 19 ...
(enforced with
anti-miscegenation laws
Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalization, criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different R ...
), and the separation of roles within an institution. Notably, in the
United States Armed Forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
up until
1948
Events January
* January 1
** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated.
** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect.
** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...
,
black units were typically separated from white units but were still led by white officers.
![WhiteTradeOnlyLancasterOhio](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/WhiteTradeOnlyLancasterOhio.jpg)
Signs were used to indicate where African Americans could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. The
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
upheld the constitutionality of segregation in ''
Plessy v. Ferguson
''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality ...
'' (1896), so long as "
separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
" facilities were provided, a requirement that was rarely met in practice. The doctrine's applicability to public schools was unanimously overturned in ''
Brown v. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' (1954) by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice
Earl Warren
Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court presided over a major shift in American constitution ...
. In the following years the
Warren Court
The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...
further ruled against racial segregation in several landmark cases including ''
Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States'' (1964), which helped bring an end to the
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
.
Racial segregation follows two forms. ''
De jure
In law and government, ''de jure'' ( ; , "by law") describes practices that are legally recognized, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. In contrast, ("in fact") describes situations that exist in reality, even if not legally ...
'' segregation mandated the separation of races by law, and was the form imposed by
slave codes
The slave codes were laws relating to slavery and enslaved people, specifically regarding the Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery in the Americas.
Most slave codes were concerned with the rights and duties of free people in regards to ensla ...
before the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
and by
Black Codes
The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832, James Kent (jurist), James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in re ...
and
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
following the war. ''De jure'' segregation was outlawed by the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
, the
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement ...
, and the
Fair Housing Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots.
Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applie ...
of 1968. ''
De facto
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
'' segregation, or segregation "in fact", is that which exists without sanction of the law. ''De facto'' segregation continues today in areas such as
residential segregation
Residential segregation in the United States is the physical separation of two or more groups into different neighborhoods—a form of segregation that "sorts population groups into various neighborhood contexts and shapes the living environment a ...
and
school segregation School segregation is the division of people into different groups in the education system by characteristics such as race, religion, or ethnicity. See also
*''D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic''
*School segregation in the United States
*Single- ...
because of both contemporary behavior and the historical legacy of ''de jure'' segregation.
History
Reconstruction in the South
Congress passed the
Reconstruction Acts
The Reconstruction Acts, or the Military Reconstruction Acts, (March 2, 1867, 14 Stat. 428-430, c.153; March 23, 1867, 15 Stat. 2-5, c.6; July 19, 1867, 15 Stat. 14-16, c.30; and March 11, 1868, 15 Stat. 41, c.25) were four statutes passed duri ...
of 1867,
ratified
Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent that lacked the authority to bind the principal legally. Ratification defines the international act in which a state indicates its consent to be bound to a treaty if the parties inte ...
the
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ...
in 1870, granting African Americans the right to vote, and it also enacted the
Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875, sometimes called the Enforcement Act or the Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to civil rights violations against African Americans. The bill was passed by the ...
forbidding racial segregation in accommodations. As a result, the presence of Federal occupation troops in the South assured that black people were allowed to vote and elect their own political leaders. The Reconstruction amendments asserted the supremacy of the national state and they also asserted that everyone within it was formally equal under the law. However, it did not prohibit segregation in schools.
When the
Republicans came to power in the Southern states after 1867, they created the first system of taxpayer-funded public schools. Southern black people wanted public schools for their children, but they did not demand racially integrated schools. Almost all the new public schools were segregated, apart from a few in
. After the Republicans lost power in the mid-1870s,
Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats, historically sometimes known colloquially as Dixiecrats, are members of the U.S. History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party who reside in the Southern United States. Southern Democrats were generally mu ...
retained the public school systems but sharply cut their funding.
Almost all private academies and colleges in the South were strictly segregated by race. The
American Missionary Association
The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and ...
supported the development and establishment of several
historically black colleges
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. Mo ...
including
Fisk University
Fisk University is a private historically black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its campus is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1930, Fisk was the first Africa ...
and
Shaw University
Shaw University is a private Baptist historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. Founded on December 1, 1865, Shaw University is the oldest HBCU to begin offering courses in ...
. In this period, a handful of northern colleges accepted black students. Northern denominations and especially their missionary associations established private schools across the South to provide secondary education. They provided a small amount of collegiate work. Tuition was minimal, so churches financially supported the colleges and also subsidized the pay of some teachers. In 1900, churches—mostly based in the North—operated 247 schools for black people across the South, with a budget of about $1 million. They employed 1600 teachers and taught 46,000 students. Prominent schools included
Howard University
Howard University (Howard) is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commissi ...
, a private, federally chartered institution based in Washington, D.C.;
Fisk University
Fisk University is a private historically black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its campus is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1930, Fisk was the first Africa ...
in Nashville,
Atlanta University
Clark Atlanta University (CAU or Clark Atlanta) is a private, Methodist, historically black research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark Atlanta is the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Southern United States. Founde ...
,
Hampton Institute
Hampton University is a private, historically black, research university in Hampton, Virginia. Founded in 1868 as Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, it was established by Black and White leaders of the American Missionary Association af ...
in Virginia, and others.
By the early 1870s, the North lost interest in further reconstruction efforts, and, when federal troops were withdrawn in 1877, the
Republican Party in the South splintered and lost support, leading to the conservatives (calling themselves "
Redeemers
The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era of the United States, Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War, Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Par ...
") taking control of all the Southern states.
'Jim Crow' segregation began somewhat later, in the 1880s. Disfranchisement of black people began in the 1890s. Although the Republican Party had championed African-American rights during the Civil War and had become a platform for black political influence during Reconstruction, a backlash among white Republicans led to the rise of the
lily-white movement
The lily-white movement was an anti-black political movement within the Republican Party in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a response to the political and socioeconomic gains made by African-Americans foll ...
to remove African Americans from leadership positions in the party and to incite riots to divide the party, with the ultimate goal of eliminating black influence. By 1910, segregation was firmly established across the South and most of the border region, and only a small number of black leaders were allowed to vote across the
Deep South
The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...
.
Jim Crow era
![Segregated cinema entrance3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Segregated_cinema_entrance3.jpg)
The legitimacy of laws requiring segregation of black people was upheld by the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
in the 1896 case of ''
Plessy v. Ferguson
''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality ...
'', 163 U.S. 537. The Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of a Louisiana statute that required railroad companies to provide "
separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
" accommodations for white and black passengers, and prohibited white people and black people from using railroad cars that were not assigned to their race.
''Plessy'' thus allowed segregation, which became standard throughout the
southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
, and represented the institutionalization of the
Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
period. Everyone was supposed to receive the same public services (schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.), but with separate facilities for each race. In practice, the services and facilities reserved for African-Americans were almost always of lower quality than those reserved for white people, if they existed at all; for example, most
African-American schools received less public funding per student than nearby white schools. Segregation was not mandated by law in the Northern states, but a ''de facto'' system grew for schools, in which nearly all black students attended schools that were nearly all-black. In the South, white schools had only white pupils and teachers, while black schools had only black teachers and black students.
President
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
, a Southern Democrat, initiated the segregation of federal workplaces in 1913.
Some
streetcar
A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...
companies did not segregate voluntarily. It took 15 years for the government to break down their resistance.
On at least six occasions over nearly 60 years, the Supreme Court held, either explicitly or by necessary implication, that the "
separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
" rule announced in Plessy was the correct rule of law, although, toward the end of that period, the Court began to focus on whether the separate facilities were in fact equal.
The repeal of "separate but equal" laws was a major focus of the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
. In ''
Brown v. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the Supreme Court outlawed segregated public education facilities for black people and white people at the state level. The
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
superseded all state and local laws requiring segregation. Compliance with the new law came slowly, and it took years with many cases in lower courts to enforce it.
New Deal era
The
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
of the 1930s was racially segregated; black people and whites rarely worked alongside each other in New Deal programs. The largest relief program by far was the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
(WPA); it operated segregated units, as did its youth affiliate, the
National Youth Administration
The National Youth Administration (NYA) was a New Deal agency sponsored by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his presidency. It focused on providing work and education for Americans between the ages of 16 and 25. It operated from June 26, 1935 to ...
(NYA).
Black people were hired by the WPA as supervisors in the North; of 10,000 WPA supervisors in the South, only 11 were black. Historian Anthony Badger argues, "New Deal programs in the South routinely discriminated against black people and perpetuated segregation." In its first few weeks of operation,
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...
(CCC) camps in the North were integrated. By July 1935, practically all the CCC camps in the United States were segregated, and black people were strictly limited in the supervisory roles they were assigned.
Philip Klinkner
Philip A. Klinkner (born May 21, 1963) is an American political scientist, blogger and author. He is noted for his work on American politics, especially political parties and elections, race and American politics, and American political history.
K ...
and
Rogers Smith
Rogers M. Smith (born September 20, 1953) is an American political scientist and author noted for his research and writing on American constitutional and political development and political thought, with a focus on issues of citizenship and rac ...
argue that "even the most prominent racial liberals in the New Deal did not dare to criticize Jim Crow." Secretary of the Interior
Harold Ickes was one of the Roosevelt Administration's most prominent supporters of black people and former president of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP. In 1937, when Senator
Josiah Bailey
Josiah William Bailey (September 14, 1873 – December 15, 1946) was an American politician who served as a U.S. senator from the state of North Carolina from 1931 to 1946.
Early life and education
Born in Warrenton, North Carolina, he grew ...
, a Democrat from North Carolina, accused him of trying to break down segregation laws, Ickes wrote him to deny that:
:I think it is up to the states to work out their social problems if possible, and while I have always been interested in seeing that the Negro has a square deal, I have never dissipated my strength against the particular stone wall of segregation. I believe that wall will crumble when the Negro has brought himself to a high educational and economic status…. Moreover, while there are no segregation laws in the North, there is segregation in fact and we might as well recognize this.
The New Deal, nonetheless, provided unprecedented federal benefits to blacks. This led many to become part of the
New Deal coalition from their base in Northern and Western cities where they could now vote, having in large numbers left the South during the
Great Migration.
Influenced in part by the "
Black Cabinet
The Black Cabinet, or Federal Council of Negro Affairs or Black Brain Trust, was the informal term for a group of African Americans who served as public policy advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in his te ...
" advisors and the
March on Washington Movement
The March on Washington Movement (MOWM), 1941–1946, organized by activists A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin was a tool designed to pressure the U.S. government into providing fair working opportunities for African Americans and desegregating ...
, just prior to America's entry into World War II, Roosevelt issued
Executive Order 8802
Executive Order 8802 was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941, to prohibit ethnic or racial discrimination in the nation's defense industry. It also set up the Fair Employment Practice Committee. It was the first federal ac ...
, the first anti-discrimination order at the federal level and established the
Fair Employment Practices Committee
A fair (archaic: faire or fayre) is a gathering of people for a variety of entertainment or commercial activities. Fairs are typically temporary with scheduled times lasting from an afternoon to several weeks.
Types
Variations of fairs incl ...
.
Roosevelt's successor, President
Harry Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
appointed the
President's Committee on Civil Rights
The President's Committee on Civil Rights was a United States presidential commission established by President Harry Truman in 1946. The committee was created by Executive Order 9808 on December 5, 1946, and instructed to investigate the status o ...
, and issued Executive Order 9980 and
Executive Order 9981
Executive Order 9981 was issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. This executive order abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces, and led to the re-integra ...
providing for desegregation throughout the federal government and the armed forces.
Hypersegregation
In an often-cited 1988 study, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton compiled 20 existing segregation measures and reduced them to five dimensions of residential segregation. Dudley L. Poston and Michael Micklin argue that Massey and Denton "brought conceptual clarity to the theory of segregation measurement by identifying five dimensions".
African Americans are considered to be racially segregated because of all five dimensions of segregation being applied to them within these inner cities across the U.S. These five dimensions are evenness, clustering, exposure, centralization and concentration.
Evenness is the difference between the percentage of a minority group in a particular part of a city, compared to the city as a whole. Exposure is the likelihood that a minority and a majority party will come in contact with one another. Clustering is the gathering of different minority groups into a single space; clustering often leads to one big
ghetto
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
and the formation of "hyperghettoization." Centralization measures the tendency of members of a minority group to be located in the middle of an urban area, often computed as a percentage of a minority group living in the middle of a city (as opposed to the outlying areas). Concentration is the dimension that relates to the actual amount of land a minority lives on within its particular city. The higher segregation is within that particular area, the smaller the amount of land a minority group will control.
The pattern of hypersegregation began in the early 20th century. African-Americans who moved to large cities often moved into the inner-city in order to gain industrial jobs. The influx of new African-American residents caused many white residents to move to the suburbs in a case of
white flight
White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
. As industry began to move out of the inner-city, the African-American residents lost the stable jobs that had brought them to the area. Many were unable to leave the inner-city and became increasingly poor.
This created the inner-city ghettos that make up the core of hypersegregation. Though the
Civil Rights Act of 1968
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots.
Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applie ...
banned discrimination in housing, housing patterns established earlier saw the perpetuation of hypersegregation. Data from the 2000 census shows that 29 metropolitan areas displayed black-white hypersegregation. Two areas—Los Angeles and New York City—displayed Hispanic-white hypersegregation. No metropolitan area displayed hypersegregation for Asians or for Native Americans.
Racism
During most of the 20th century, many (perhaps most) whites believed that the presence of blacks in white neighborhoods would bring down
property value
Real estate appraisal, property valuation or land valuation is the process of developing an opinion of value for real property (usually market value). Real estate transactions often require appraisals because they occur infrequently and every pr ...
s. The United States government began to make low-interest mortgages available to families through the
Federal Housing Administration
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), also known as the Office of Housing within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is a United States government agency founded by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, created in part ...
(FHA) and the
Veteran's Administration
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers and ...
. Black families were legally entitled to these loans but they were sometimes denied these loans because the planners who were behind this initiative labeled many black neighborhoods throughout the country as neighborhoods which were "in decline". The rules for loans did not say that "black families cannot get loans"; rather, they said that people who were from "areas in decline" could not get loans. While a case could be made that the wording did not appear to compel segregation, it tended to have that effect. In fact, this administration was formed as part of the
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
for all Americans but it mostly affected black residents of inner-city areas; most black families did in fact live in the
inner city
The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists some ...
areas of large cities and they almost entirely occupied these areas after the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
when whites began to move to new suburbs.
The government encouraged white families to move into suburbs by granting them loans, and it uprooted many established African American communities by building elevated highways through their neighborhoods. In order to build these elevated highways, the government destroyed tens of thousands of single-family homes. Because these properties were summarily declared to be "in decline," families were given pittances for their properties, and forced to move into federally-funded housing which was called "the projects". To build these projects, still more single-family homes were demolished.
President
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
did not oppose segregation practices by autonomous department heads of the federal
Civil Service
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
, according to Brian J. Cook in his work, ''Democracy And Administration: Woodrow Wilson's Ideas And The Challenges Of Public Management''. White and
black people
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in s ...
were sometimes required to eat separately, go to separate schools, use separate public toilets, park benches, train, buses, and water fountains, etc. In some locales, stores and restaurants refused to serve different races under the same roof.
Public segregation was challenged by individual citizens on rare occasions but had minimal impact on civil rights issues, until December 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama,
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the ...
refused to be moved to the back of a bus for a white passenger. Parks' civil disobedience had the effect of sparking the
Montgomery bus boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States ...
. Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation.
Segregation was also pervasive in housing.
State constitutions (for example, that of
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
) had clauses giving local jurisdictions the right to regulate where members of certain races could live. In 1917, the Supreme Court in the case of ''
Buchanan v. Warley
''Buchanan v. Warley'', 245 U.S. 60 (1917), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States addressed civil government-instituted racial segregation in residential areas. The Court held unanimously that a Louisville, Kentucky city ordin ...
'' declared municipal resident segregation
ordinances unconstitutional. In response, whites resorted to the
restrictive covenant
A covenant, in its most general sense and historical sense, is a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action. Under historical English common law, a covenant was distinguished from an ordinary contract by the presence of a se ...
, a formal deed restriction binding white property owners in a given neighborhood not to sell to blacks. Whites who broke these agreements could be sued by "damaged" neighbors. In the 1948 case of ''
Shelley v. Kraemer
''Shelley v. Kraemer'', 334 U.S. 1 (1948), is a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark United States Supreme Court case that held that racially restrictive housing Covenant (law), covenants cannot legally be enforced.
The ...
'', the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
finally ruled that such covenants were unenforceable in a court of law. Residential segregation patterns had already become established in most American cities, and have often persisted up to the present from the impact of
white flight
White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
and
Redlining
In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have signif ...
.
In most cities, the only way blacks could relieve the pressure of crowding that resulted from increasing migration was to expand residential borders into surrounding previously white neighborhoods, a process that often resulted in harassment and attacks by white residents whose intolerant attitudes were intensified by fears that black neighbors would cause property values to decline. Moreover, the increased presence of African Americans in cities, North and South, as well as their competition with whites for housing, jobs, and political influence sparked a series of race riots. In 1898 white citizens of
Wilmington, North Carolina
Wilmington is a port city in and the county seat of New Hanover County in coastal southeastern North Carolina, United States.
With a population of 115,451 at the 2020 census, it is the eighth most populous city in the state. Wilmington is the ...
, resenting African Americans' involvement in local government and incensed by an editorial in an
African-American newspaper
African-American newspapers (also known as the Black press or Black newspapers) are newspaper, news publications in the United States serving African-American communities. Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm started the first African-Americ ...
accusing white women of loose sexual behavior, rioted and killed dozens of blacks. In the fury's wake,
white supremacists overthrew the city government, expelling black and white officeholders, and instituted restrictions to prevent blacks from voting. In Atlanta in 1906, newspaper accounts alleging attacks by black men on white women provoked an outburst of shooting and killing that left twelve blacks dead and seventy injured. An influx of unskilled black strikebreakers into
East St Louis, Illinois
East St. Louis is a city in St. Clair County, Illinois. It is directly across the Mississippi River from Downtown St. Louis, Missouri and the Gateway Arch National Park. East St. Louis is in the Metro-East region of Southern Illinois. Once a bu ...
, heightened
racial tensions in 1917. Rumors that blacks were arming themselves for an attack on whites resulted in numerous attacks by white mobs on black neighborhoods. On July 1, blacks fired back at a car whose occupants they believed had shot into their homes and mistakenly killed two policemen riding in a car. The next day, a full-scaled riot erupted which ended only after nine whites and thirty-nine blacks had been killed and over three hundred buildings were destroyed.
Anti-miscegenation laws
Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalization, criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different R ...
(also known as miscegenation laws) prohibited whites and non-whites from marrying each other. The first ever anti-miscegenation law was passed by the
Maryland General Assembly
The Maryland General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Maryland that convenes within the State House in Annapolis. It is a bicameral body: the upper chamber, the Maryland Senate, has 47 representatives and the lower chamb ...
in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage.
During one of his
famous debates with
Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas (April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. A senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party for president in the 1860 presidential election, which wa ...
in
Charleston, Illinois
Charleston is a city in, and the county seat of, Coles County, Illinois, United States. The population was 17,286, as of the 2020 census. The city is home to Eastern Illinois University and has close ties with its neighbor, Mattoon. Both are p ...
in 1858,
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people". By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes.
By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states.
While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor
Sammy Davis Jr.
Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, dancer, actor, comedian, film producer and television director.
At age three, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the ...
faced a backlash for his involvement with white actress
Kim Novak
Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter.
Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, ...
.
Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn (July 23, 1891 – February 27, 1958) was a co-founder, president, and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation.
Life and career
Cohn was born to a working-class Jewish family in New York City. His father, Joseph Cohn, wa ...
, the president of Columbia Pictures (with whom Novak was under contract) gave in to his concerns that a racist backlash against the relationship could hurt the studio.
Davis briefly married black dancer Loray White in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence.
Inebriated at the wedding ceremony, Davis despairingly said to his best friend, Arthur Silber Jr., "Why won't they let me live my life?"
The couple never lived together and commenced divorce proceedings in September 1958.
[Lanzendorfer, Joy (August 9, 2017]
"Hollywood Loved Sammy Davis Jr. Until He Dated a White Movie Star"
'' Smithsonian'' Retrieved February 23, 2021. In 1958, officers in
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
entered the home of
Richard and Mildred Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years.
In 1965, Virginia trial court Judge Leon Bazile, who heard their original case, defended his decision:
![ColoredSailersRoomWWINOLA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/ColoredSailersRoomWWINOLA.jpg)
In
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, blacks served in the
United States Armed Forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
in segregated units. Black soldiers were often poorly trained and equipped, and were often put on the frontlines in
suicide mission
A suicide mission is a task which is so dangerous for the people involved that they are not expected to survive. The term is sometimes extended to include suicide attacks such as kamikaze and suicide bombings, whose perpetrators actively commit s ...
s. The 369th Infantry (formerly 15th New York National Guard) Regiment distinguished themselves, and were known as the "
Harlem Hellfighters
The 369th Infantry Regiment, originally formed as the 15th New York National Guard Regiment before being re-organized as the 369th upon federalization and commonly referred to as the Harlem Hellfighters, was an infantry regiment of the New Y ...
".
![African-americans-wwii-002](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/African-americans-wwii-002.jpg)
The U.S. military was still heavily segregated in World War II. The
Army Air Corps Army Air Corps may refer to the following army aviation corps:
* Army Air Corps (United Kingdom), the army aviation element of the British Army
* Philippine Army Air Corps (1935–1941)
* United States Army Air Corps (1926–1942), or its p ...
(forerunner of the
Air Force
An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an a ...
) and the
Marines
Marines, or naval infantry, are typically a military force trained to operate in littoral zones in support of naval operations. Historically, tasks undertaken by marines have included helping maintain discipline and order aboard the ship (refle ...
had no blacks enlisted in their ranks. There were blacks in the Navy
Seabees
United States Naval Construction Battalions, better known as the Navy Seabees, form the U.S. Naval Construction Force (NCF). The Seabee nickname is a heterograph of the initial letters "CB" from the words "Construction Battalion". Depending upon ...
. The army had only five African-American officers.
[ No African American received the ]Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest military decoration and is awarded to recognize American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, guardians and coast guardsmen who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor. ...
during the war, and their tasks in the war were largely reserved to non-combat units. Black soldiers had to sometimes give up their seats in trains to the Nazi prisoners of war. World War II saw the first black military pilots in the U.S., the Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of primarily African American military pilots (fighter and bomber) and airmen who fought in World War II. They formed the 332d Fighter Group and the 477th Fighter Group, 477th Bombardment Group (Medium) of the ...
, 99th Fighter Squadron, and also saw the segregated 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion participate in the liberation of Jewish survivors at Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...
. Despite the institutional policy of racially segregated training for enlisted members and in tactical units; Army policy dictated that black and white soldiers train together in officer candidate schools (beginning in 1942). Thus, the Officer Candidate School (U.S. Army), Officer Candidate School became the Army's first formal experiment with integration – with all Officer Candidates, regardless of race, living and training together.
During World War II, 110,000 Japanese Americans, people of Japanese descent (whether citizens or not) were placed in internment camps. Hundreds of people of German Americans, German and Italian Americans, Italian descent were also imprisoned (see German American internment and Italian American internment). While the government program of Japanese American internment targeted all the Japanese in America as enemies, most German and Italian Americans were left in peace and were allowed to serve in the U.S. military.
Pressure to end racial segregation in the Federal government of the United States, government grew among African Americans and progressives after the end of World War II. On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981
Executive Order 9981 was issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. This executive order abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces, and led to the re-integra ...
, ending segregation in the United States Armed Forces.
A club central to the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City was a whites-only establishment, with blacks (such as Duke Ellington) allowed to perform, but to a white audience. The first black Oscar recipient Hattie McDaniel was not permitted to attend the premiere of ''Gone with the Wind (film), Gone with the Wind'' with Racial segregation in Atlanta, Atlanta being racially segregated, and at the 12th Academy Awards ceremony at the Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles), Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles she was required to sit at a segregated table at the far wall of the room; the hotel had a no-blacks policy, but allowed McDaniel in as a favor. McDaniel's final wish to be buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood Cemetery was denied because the graveyard was restricted to whites only.
On September 11, 1964, John Lennon announced The Beatles would not play to a segregated audience in Jacksonville, Florida. City officials relented following this announcement.["The Beatles banned segregated audiences, contract shows"](_blank)
BBC. Retrieved July 17, 2017 A contract for a 1965 Beatles concert at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California, specifies that the band "not be required to perform in front of a segregated audience".
Despite all the legal changes that have taken place since the 1940s and especially in the 1960s (see Desegregation), the United States remains, to some degree, a segregated society, with housing patterns, school enrollment, church membership, employment opportunities, and even college admissions all reflecting significant ''de facto'' segregation. Supporters of affirmative action argue that the persistence of such disparities reflects either racial discrimination or the persistence of its effects.
''Gates v. Collier'' was a case decided in federal court that brought an end to the Trusty system (prison), trusty system and flagrant inmate abuse at the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, Mississippi. In 1972 federal judge, William C. Keady found that Parchman Farm violated modern standards of decency. He ordered an immediate end to all unconstitutional conditions and practices. Racial segregation of inmates was abolished. And the trusty system, which allowed certain inmates to have power and control over others, was also abolished.
More recently, the disparity between the Race and incarceration in the United States, racial compositions of inmates in the American prison system has led to concerns that the U.S. Justice system furthers a "new apartheid".
Scientific racism
The intellectual roots of ''Plessy v. Ferguson
''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality ...
'', the landmark United States Supreme Court decision which upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation, under the doctrine of "separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
", were partially tied to the scientific racism of the era. The popular support of the decision was likely a result of the racist beliefs which were held by most whites at the time. Later, the court decision ''Brown v. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' rejected the ideas of scientific racists about the need for segregation, especially in schools. Following that decision both scholarly and popular ideas of scientific racism played an important role in the attack and backlash that followed the court decision.
The ''Mankind Quarterly'' is a journal that has published scientific racism. It was founded in 1960, partly in response to the 1954 United States Supreme Court decision ''Brown v. Board of Education'', which ordered the desegregation of US schools. Many of the publication's contributors, publishers, and board of directors espouse academic hereditarianism. The publication is widely criticized for its extremist politics, anti-semitic bent and its support for scientific racism.
In the South
After the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops, which followed from the Compromise of 1877, the Democratic governments in the South instituted state laws to separate black and white racial groups, submitting African-Americans to ''de facto'' second-class citizenship and enforcing white supremacy. Collectively, these state laws were called the Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
system, after the name of a stereotypical 1830s black minstrel show character.[Remembering Jim Crow](_blank)
– Minnesota Public Radio Sometimes, as in Florida's Florida Constitutional Convention of 1885, Constitution of 1885, segregation was mandated by state constitutions.
Racial segregation became the law in most parts of the Southern United States, American South until the Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
. These laws, known as Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
, forced segregation of facilities and services, prohibited intermarriage, and denied suffrage. Impacts included:
* Segregation of facilities included separate schools, hotels, bars, hospitals, toilets, parks, even telephone booths, and separate sections in libraries, cinemas, and restaurants, the latter often with separate ticket windows and counters.
** After Reconstruction, many southern states passed Jim crow laws and followed the "separate but equal" doctrine created during the Plessy v. Ferguson, Plessy vs Ferguson case. Segregated libraries under this system existed in most parts of the south. The East Henry Street Carnegie Library, East Henry Street Carnegie library in Savannah, Georgia, Savannah, built by African Americans during the segregation era in 1914 with help from the Carnegie foundation, is one example. Hundreds of segregated libraries existed across the United States prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
. These libraries were often underfunded, understocked, and had fewer services than their white counterparts. Only during the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, Brown vs Board was the acknowledgement that separate was never equal and that African Americans were not segregating by choice. During the Civil rights movement, several demonstrations and sit-ins were orchestrated by activist including nine Tougaloo College, Tugaloo College students who were arrested when they requested service from the all-white Jackson Public Library in Mississippi. Another example was the St. Helena Four, where four local teenagers made several attempts to use the Auburn Regional Library located in Greensburg, Louisiana, Greenburg, Louisiana. Police were typically called on these civil rights activists usually resulting in some form of intimidation or incarceration. Libraries in several states continued their segregation practices even after the "separate but equal" doctrine was overruled by the Civil Rights Act. In 1964 E.J. Josey, the first African American member of ALA, put forth a resolution preventing ALA officers and staff members to attend segregated state chapter meetings. The segregated states being targeted by this resolution were Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. This resolution led to the integration of these state's libraries within a few years.
* Laws prohibited blacks from being present in certain locations. For example, blacks in 1939 were not allowed on the streets of Palm Beach, Florida after dark, unless required by their employment.
* Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, State laws prohibiting interracial marriage ("miscegenation") had been enforced throughout the South and in many Northern states since the Colonial era. During Reconstruction era of the United States, Reconstruction, such laws were repealed in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Texas and South Carolina. In all these states such laws were reinstated after the Democratic "Redeemers
The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era of the United States, Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War, Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Par ...
" came to power. The SCOTUS, Supreme Court declared such laws constitutional in 1883. This verdict was overturned only in 1967 by ''Loving v. Virginia''.
* The Black suffrage in the United States, voting rights of blacks were systematically restricted or denied through suffrage laws, such as the introduction of poll tax (United States), poll taxes and literacy tests. Loopholes, such as the grandfather clause and the understanding clause, protected the voting rights of white people who were unable to pay the tax or pass the literacy test. (See Benjamin Tillman#Disenfranchising the African American: 1895 state constitutional convention, Senator Benjamin Tillman's open defense of this practice.) Only whites could vote in Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party primary contests. Where and when black people did manage to vote in numbers, their votes were negated by systematic Gerrymandering in the United States, gerrymander of electoral boundaries.
* In theory the segregated facilities available for negroes were of the same quality as those available to whites, under the separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
doctrine. In practice this was rarely the case. For example, in Martin County, Florida, students at Stuart Training School "read second-hand books...that were discarded from their all-white counterparts at Martin County High School, Stuart High School. They also wore secondhand basketball and football uniforms.... The students and their parents built the basketball court and sidewalks at the school without the help of the school board. 'We even put in wiring for lights along the sidewalk, but the school board never connected the electricity.'"
In the North
Formal segregation also existed in the North. Some neighborhoods were restricted to blacks and job opportunities were denied them by unions in, for example, the skilled building trades. Blacks who moved to the North in the Great Migration after World War I sometimes could live without the same degree of oppression experienced in the South, but the racism and discrimination still existed.
The rapid influx of blacks during the Great Migration disturbed the racial balance within Northern and Western cities, exacerbating hostility between both blacks and whites in the two regions. Deed restrictions and restrictive covenants became an important instrument for enforcing racial segregation in most towns and cities, becoming widespread in the 1920s. Such covenants were employed by many real estate development, real estate developers to "protect" entire subdivision (land), subdivisions, with the primary intent to keep "white people, white" neighborhoods "white". Ninety percent of the housing projects built in the years following World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
were racially restricted by such covenants. Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Seattle, and St. Louis.
The Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois, Cicero, for example, was made famous when Civil Rights advocate Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march advocating open (race-unbiased) housing.
Within employment, economic opportunities for blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. In 1900 Reverend Matthew Anderson, speaking at the annual Hampton Negro Conference in Virginia, said that "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South. There seems to be an apparent effort throughout the North, especially in the cities to debar the colored worker from all the avenues of higher remunerative labor, which makes it more difficult to improve his economic condition even than in the South." In the 1930s, job discrimination ended for many African Americans in the North, after the Congress of Industrial Organizations, one of America's lead labor unions at the time, agreed to integrate the union.
School segregation in the North was also a major issue. In Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, towns in the south of those states enforced school segregation, despite the fact that it was prohibited by state laws. Indiana also required school segregation by state law. During the 1940s, NAACP lawsuits quickly depleted segregation from the Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey southern areas. In 1949, Indiana officially repealed its school segregation law as well. The most common form of segregation in the northern states came from anti-miscegenation laws.
The state of Oregon went farther than even any of the Southern states, specifically excluding blacks from entering the state, or from owning property within it. School integration did not come about until the mid-1970s. As of 2017, the population of Oregon was about 2% black.
In Alaska
Racial segregation in Alaska was primarily targeted at Alaska Natives. In 1905, the Nelson Act specified an educational system for whites and one for indigenous Alaskans. Public areas such as playgrounds, swimming pools, and theaters were also segregated. Groups such as the Alaska Native Brotherhood/Sisterhood, Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) staged boycotts of places that supported segregation. In 1941, Elizabeth Peratrovich (Tlingit) and her husband argued to the governor of Alaska, Ernest Gruening, that segregation was "very Un-American." Gruening supported anti-discrimination laws and pushed for their passage. In 1944, Alberta Schenck Adams, Alberta Schenck (Iñupiat, Inupiaq) staged a sit-in in the whites-only section of a theater in Nome, Alaska. In 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States, the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945, Alaska Equal Rights Act, was passed in Alaska. The law made segregation illegal and banned signs that discriminate based on race.
Sports
Segregation in sports in the United States was also a major national issue. In 1900, just four years after the US Supreme Court separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
constitutional ruling, segregation was enforced in horse racing, a sport which had previously seen many African American jockeys win United States Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing, Triple Crown and other major races. Widespread segregation also existed in bicycle and automobile racing. In 1890, segregation lessened for African-American track and field athletes after various universities and colleges in the northern states agreed to integrate their track and field teams. Like track and field, soccer was another which experienced a low amount of segregation in the early days of segregation. Many colleges and universities in the northern states allowed African Americans to play on their football teams.
Segregation was also hardly enforced in boxing. In 1908, Jack Johnson (boxer), Jack Johnson became the first African American to win the World Heavyweight Title. Johnson's personal life (i.e. his publicly acknowledged relationships with white women) made him very unpopular among many Caucasians throughout the world. In 1937, when Joe Louis defeated German boxer Max Schmeling, the general American public embraced an African American as the World Heavyweight Champion.
In 1904, Charles Follis became the first African American to play for a professional football team, the Shelby Blues, and professional football leagues agreed to allow only a limited number of teams to be integrated. In 1933, the NFL, now the only major football league in the United States, reversed its limited integration policy and completely segregated the entire league. The NFL color barrier permanently broke in 1946, when the Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington (American football), Kenny Washington and Woody Strode and the Cleveland Browns hired Marion Motley and Bill Willis.
Prior to the 1930s, basketball saw a great deal of discrimination as well. Blacks and whites played mostly in different leagues and usually were forbidden from playing in inter-racial games. The popularity of the African American Harlem Globetrotters altered the American public's acceptance of African Americans in basketball. By the end of the 1930s, many northern colleges and universities allowed African Americans to play on their teams. In 1942, the color barrier for basketball was removed after Bill Jones (basketball, born 1914), Bill Jones and three other African American basketball players joined the Toledo Jim White Chevrolet National Basketball League (United States), NBL franchise and five Harlem Globetrotters joined the Chicago Studebakers.
In 1947, the baseball color line was broken when Negro league baseball player Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and had a breakthrough season.
By the end of 1949, only fifteen states had no segregation laws in effect. and only eighteen states had outlawed segregation in public lodging, accommodations. Of the remaining states, twenty still allowed school segregation to take place, fourteen still allowed segregation to remain in public transportation and 30 still enforced laws forbidding miscegenation.
NCAA Division I has two historically black athletic conferences: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (founded in 1970) and Southwestern Athletic Conference (founded in 1920). The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (founded in 1912) and Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (founded in 1913) are part of the NCAA Division II, whereas the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference (founded in 1981) is part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Division I.
In 1948, the National Association for Intercollegiate Basketball became the first national organization to open their intercollegiate postseason to black student-athletes. In 1953, it became the first collegiate association to invite historically black colleges and universities into its membership.
Golf was racially segregated until 1961. The Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) had an article in its bylaws stating that it was "for members of the Caucasian race." Once the color restrictions were lifted, the United Golf Association Tour (UGA), made up of black players, ceased operations.
Contemporary
Black-white segregation is consistently declining for most metropolitan areas and cities, though there are geographical differences. In 2000, for instance, the United States Census Bureau, US Census Bureau found that residential segregation has on average declined since 1980 in the West and South, but less so in the Northeast and Midwest. Indeed, the top ten most segregated cities are in the Rust Belt, where total populations have declined in the last few decades. Despite these pervasive patterns, changes for individual areas are sometimes small. Thirty years after the civil rights era, the United States remained a residentially segregated society in which blacks and whites still often inhabited vastly different neighborhoods.
Redlining
In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have signif ...
is the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The most devastating form of redlining, and the most common use of the term, refers to Mortgage Discrimination. Data on house prices and attitudes toward integration suggest that in the mid-20th century, segregation was a product of collective actions taken by whites to exclude blacks from their neighborhoods.
The creation of Interstate Highway System, expressways in some cases divided and isolated black neighborhoods from goods and services, many times within industrial corridors. For example, Birmingham's interstate highway system attempted to maintain the racial boundaries that had been established by the city's 1926 racial zoning law. The construction of interstate highways through black neighborhoods in the city led to significant population loss in those neighborhoods and is associated with an increase in neighborhood racial segregation.
The desire of some whites to avoid having their children attend integrated schools has been a factor in white flight
White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
to the suburbs, and in the foundation of numerous Segregation academy, segregation academies and Private school#United States, private schools which most African-American students, though technically permitted to attend, are unable to afford. Recent studies in San Francisco showed that groups of homeowners tended to self-segregate to be with people of the same education level and race. By 1990, the legal barriers enforcing segregation had been mostly replaced by indirect factors, including the phenomenon where whites pay more than blacks to live in predominantly white areas. The residential and social segregation of whites from blacks in the United States creates a socialization process that limits whites' chances for developing meaningful relationships with blacks and other minorities. The segregation experienced by whites from blacks fosters segregated lifestyles and leads them to develop positive views about themselves and negative views about blacks.
Segregation affects people from all social classes. For example, a survey conducted in 2000 found that middle-income, suburban Blacks live in neighborhoods with many more whites than do poor, inner-city blacks. But their neighborhoods are not the same as those of whites having the same socioeconomic characteristics; and, in particular, middle-class blacks tend to live with white neighbors who are less affluent than they are. While, in a significant sense, they are less segregated than poor blacks, race still powerfully shapes their residential options.
The number of hypersegregated inner-cities is now beginning to decline. By reviewing census data, Rima Wilkes and John Iceland found that nine metropolitan areas that had been hypersegregated in 1990 were not by 2000. Only two new cities, Atlanta and Mobile, Alabama, became hypersegregated over the same time span. This points toward a trend of greater integration across most of the United States.
Residential
Racial segregation is most pronounced in housing. Although in the U.S. people of different races may work together, they are still very unlikely to live in integrated neighborhoods. This pattern differs only by degree in different metropolitan areas.
Residential segregation persists for a variety of reasons. Segregated neighborhoods may be reinforced by the practice of "Racial steering, steering" by real estate agents. This occurs when a real estate agent makes assumptions about where their client might like to live based on the color of their skin. Housing discrimination may occur when landlords lie about the availability of housing based on the race of the applicant or give different terms and conditions to the housing based on race; for example, requiring that black families pay a higher security deposit than white families.
Redlining has helped preserve segregated living patterns for blacks and whites in the United States because discrimination motivated by prejudice is often contingent on the racial composition of neighborhoods where the loan is sought and the race of the applicant. Lending institutions have been shown to treat black mortgage applicants differently when buying homes in white neighborhoods than when buying homes in black neighborhoods in 1998.
These discriminatory practices are illegal. The Fair Housing Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots.
Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applie ...
of 1968 prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity is charged with administering and enforcing fair housing laws. Any person who believes that they have faced housing discrimination based on their race can file a fair housing complaint.
Households were held back or limited to the money that could be made. Inequality was present in the workforce which lead over to the residential areas. This study provides this statistic of "The median household income of African Americans were 62 percent of non-Hispanic Whites ($27,910 vs. $44,504)" Blacks were forced by the system to be in urban and poor areas while the whites lived together, being able to afford the more expensive homes. These forced measures promoted poverty levels to rise and belittle blacks.
Massey and Denton proposed that the fundamental cause of poverty among African Americans is segregation. This segregation has created the inner city black urban ghettos that create poverty traps and keep blacks from being able to escape the underclass. It is sometimes claimed that these neighborhoods have institutionalized an inner-city black culture that is negatively stigmatized and purports the economic situation of the black community. Sociolinguist, William Labov argues that persistent segregation supports the use of African American English (AAE) while endangering its speakers. Although AAE is stigmatized, sociolinguists who study it note that it is a legitimate dialect of English as systematic as any other. Arthur Spears argues that there is no inherent educational disadvantage in speaking AAE and that it exists in vernacular and more standard forms.
Historically, residential segregation split communities between the black inner city and white suburbs. This phenomenon is due to white flight
White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
where whites actively leave neighborhoods often because of a black presence. There are more than just geographical consequences to this, as the money leaves and poverty grows, crime rates jump and businesses leave and follow the money. This creates a job shortage in segregated neighborhoods and perpetuates the economic inequality in the inner city. With the wealth and businesses gone from inner-city areas, the tax base decreases, which hurts funding for education. Consequently, those that can afford to leave the area for better schools leave decreasing the tax base for educational funding even more. Any business that is left or would consider opening doesn't want to invest in a place nobody has any money but has a lot of crime, meaning the only things that are left in these communities are poor black people with little opportunity for employment or education."
Today, a number of whites are willing, and are able, to pay a premium to live in a predominantly white neighborhood. Equivalent housing in white areas commands a higher rent. By bidding up the price of housing, many white neighborhoods again effectively shut out blacks, because blacks are unwilling, or unable, to pay the premium to buy entry into white neighborhoods. While some scholars maintain that residential segregation has continued—some sociologists have termed it "hypersegregation" or "American Apartheid"—the US Census Bureau has shown that residential segregation has been in overall decline since 1980. According to a 2012 study found that "credit markets enabled a substantial fraction of Hispanic families to live in neighborhoods with fewer black families, even though a substantial fraction of black families were moving to more racially integrated areas. The net effect is that credit markets increased racial segregation."
As of 2015, residential segregation had taken new forms in the United States with black majority minority suburbs such as Ferguson, Missouri, supplanting the historic model of black inner cities, white suburbs. Meanwhile, in locations such as Washington, D.C., gentrification had resulted in development of new white neighborhoods in historically black inner cities. Segregation occurs through premium pricing by white people of housing in white neighborhoods and exclusion of low-income housing rather than through rules which enforce segregation. Black segregation is most pronounced; Hispanic segregation less so, and Asian segregation the least.
Commercial and industrial
Lila Ammons discusses the process of establishing black-owned banks during the 1880s–1990s, as a method of dealing with the discriminatory practices of financial institutions against African-American citizens of the United States. Within this period, she describes five distinct periods that illustrate the developmental process of establishing these banks, which were:
1888–1928
In 1851, one of the first meetings to begin the process of establishing black-owned banks took place, although the ideas and implementation of these ideas were not utilized until 1888.
During this period, approximately 60 black-owned banks were created, which gave blacks the ability to access loans and other banking needs, which non-minority banks would not offer African-Americans.
1929–1953
Only five banks were opened during this time, while seeing many black-owned banks closed, leaving these banks with an expected nine-year life span for their operations. With blacks continuing to migrate toward northern urban areas, they were challenged by high unemployment rates, due to whites taking their jobs. At this time, the entire Banking in the United States, banking industry in the U.S. was stagnated, and these smaller banks even more for having higher closure rates and lower rates of loan repayment. The first groups of banks invested their profits back into the black community, whereas banks established during this period invested their finances mainly in mortgage loans, fraternal societies, and U.S. Bonds, U.S. government bonds.
1954–1969
Approximately 20 more banks were established during this period, which also saw African Americans become active citizens by taking part in various social movements centered around economic equality, better housing, better jobs, and the desegregation of society. Through desegregation, these banks could no longer solely depend on the Black community for business and were forced to become established on the open market, by paying their employees competitive wages, and were now required to meet the needs of the entire society instead of just the Black community.
1970–1979
Urban deindustrialization was occurring, resulting in the number of black-owned banks being increased considerably, with 35 banks established, during this time. Although this change in economy allowed more banks to be opened, this period further impoverished African-American communities, as unemployment rates raised more with the shift in the labour market, from unskilled labour to government jobs.
1980–1990s
Approximately 20 banks were established during this time, competing with other financial institutions that serve the financial necessities of people at a lower cost.
2000s
Dan Immergluck writes that in 2003 small businesses in black neighborhoods still received fewer loans, even after accounting for business density, business size, industrial mix, neighborhood income, and the credit quality of local businesses. Gregory D. Squires wrote in 2003 that it is clear that race has long affected and continues to affect the policies and practices of the insurance industry. Workers living in American inner-cities have a harder time finding jobs than suburban workers, a factor that disproportionately affects black workers.
Rich Benjamin's book, ''Searching for Whitopia, Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America'', reveals the state of residential, educational, and social segregation. In analyzing racial and class segregation, the book documents the migration of white Americans from urban centers to small-town, exurban, and rural communities. Throughout the 20th Century, racial discrimination was deliberate and intentional. Today, racial segregation and division result from policies and institutions that are no longer explicitly designed to discriminate. Yet the outcomes of those policies and beliefs have negative, racial impacts, namely with segregation.
Transportation
Local bus companies practiced segregation in city buses. This was challenged in Montgomery, Alabama by Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the ...
, who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, and by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who organized the Montgomery bus boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States ...
(1955–1956). A federal court suit in Alabama, ''Browder v. Gayle'' (1955), was successful at the district court level, which ruled Alabama's bus segregation laws illegal. It was upheld at the Supreme Court level.
In 1961 Congress of Racial Equality director James Farmer, other CORE members and some Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee members traveled as a mixed race group, Freedom Riders, on Greyhound buses from Washington, D.C., headed toward . In several states the travelers were subject to violence. In Anniston, Alabama the Ku Klux Klan attacked the buses, setting one bus on fire. After U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy resisted taking action and urged restraint by the riders, Kennedy relented. He urged the Interstate Commerce Commission to issue an order directing that buses, trains, and their intermediate facilities, such as stations, restrooms and water fountains be desegregated.
Effects
Education
Segregation in education has major social repercussions. The prejudice that many young African-Americans experience causes them undue stress which has been proven to undermine cognitive development. Eric Hanushek and his co-authors have considered racial concentrations in schools, and they find large and important effects. Black students appear to be systematically and physically hurt by larger concentrations of black students in their school. These effects extend neither to white nor to Hispanic students in the school, implying that they are related to peer interactions and not to school quality. Moreover, it appears that the effect of black concentrations in schools is largest for high-achieving black students.
Even African Americans from poor inner-cities who attend universities can underperform academically due to worry about family and friends still in the poverty-stricken inner cities. Education is also used as a means to perpetuate hypersegregation. Real estate agents often implicitly use school racial composition as a way of enticing white buyers into the segregated ring surrounding the inner-city
The percentage of black children who now go to integrated public schools is at its lowest level since 1968.
Apartheid America: Jonathan Kozol rails against a public school system that, 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, is still deeply – and shamefully – segregated.
'' book review by Sarah Karnasiewicz for salon.com The words of "American apartheid" have been used in reference to the disparity between white and black schools in America. Those who compare this inequality to apartheid frequently point to unequal funding for predominantly black schools.
In Chicago, by the academic year 2002–2003, 87 percent of public-school enrollment was black or Hispanic; less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Washington, D.C., 94 percent of children were black or Hispanic; less than 5 percent were white.
Jonathan Kozol expanded on this topic in his book ''The Shame of the Nation, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.''
The "New American apartheid" refers to the allegation that US drug and criminal policies in practice target blacks on the basis of race. The radical left-wing web-magazine ZNet featured a series of 4 articles on "The New American Apartheid" in which it drew parallels between the treatment of blacks by the American justice system and apartheid:
Modern prisoners occupy the lowest rungs on the social class ladder, and they always have. The modern prison system (along with local jails) is a collection of ghettos or poorhouses reserved primarily for the unskilled, the uneducated, and the powerless. In increasing numbers this system is being reserved for racial minorities, especially blacks, which is why we are calling it the New American Apartheid. This is the same segment of American society that has experienced some of the most drastic reductions in income and they have been targeted for their involvement in drugs and the subsequent violence that extends from the lack of legitimate means of goal attainment.
This article has been discussed at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and by several school boards attempting to address the issue of continued segregation.
Due to education being funded primarily through local and state revenue, the quality of education varies greatly depending on the geographical location of the school. In some areas, education is primarily funded through revenue from property taxes; therefore, there is a direct correlation in some areas between the price of homes and the amount of money allocated to educating the area's youth.[Massey, Douglas S. 2004. "The New Geography of Inequality in Urban America," in C. Michael Henry, ed. Race, Poverty, and Domestic Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press.] A 2010 US Census showed that 27.4% of all African-Americans lived under the poverty line, the highest percentage of any other ethnic group in the United States. Therefore, in predominantly African-American areas, otherwise known as 'ghettos', the amount of money available for education is extremely low. This is referred to as "funding segregation". This questionable system of educational funding can be seen as one of the primary reasons contemporary racial segregation continues to prosper. Predominantly Caucasian areas with more money funneled into primary and secondary educational institutions, allow their students the resources to succeed academically and obtain post-secondary degrees. This practice continues to ethnically, socially and economically divide America.
Alternative certification, Alternative certificate programs were introduced in many inner-city schools and rural areas. These programs award a person a teaching license even though he/she has not completed a traditional teaching degree. This program came into effect in the 1980s throughout most states in response to the dwindling number of people seeking to earn a secondary degree in education. This program has been very controversial. It is, "booming despite little more than anecdotal evidence of their success.[…] there are concerns about how they will perform as teachers, especially since they are more likely to end up in poor districts teaching students in challenging situations." Alternative Certificate graduates tend to teach African-Americans and other ethnic minorities in inner-city schools and schools in impoverished small rural towns. Therefore, impoverished minorities not only have to cope with having the smallest amount of resources for their educational facilities but also with having the least trained teachers in the nation. Valorie Delp, a mother residing in an inner-city area whose child attends a school taught by teachers awarded by an alternative certificate program notes:
One teacher we know who is in this program said he had visions of coming in to "save" the kids and the school and he really believes that this idea was kind of stoked in his program. No one ever says that you may have kids who threaten to stab you, or call you unspeakable names to your face, or can't read despite being in 7th grade.
Delp showcases that, while many graduates of these certificate programs have honorable intentions and are educated, intelligent people, there is a reason why teachers have traditionally had to take a significant amount of training before officially being certified as a teacher. The experience they gain through their practicum and extensive classroom experience equips them with the tools necessary to educate today's youth.
Some measures have been taken to try give less affluent families the ability to educate their children. President Ronald Reagan introduced the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act on July 22, 1987. This Act was meant to allow children the ability to succeed if their families did not have a permanent residence. Leo Stagman, a single, African-American parent, located in Berkeley, California, whose daughter had received a great deal of aid from the Act wrote on October 20, 2012, that, "During her education, she [Leo's daughter] was eligible for the free lunch program and received assistance under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Educational Act. I know my daughter's performance is hers, but I wonder where she would have been without the assistance she received under the McKinney-Vento Act. Many students at BHS owe their graduation and success to the assistance under this law."
Leo then goes on to note that, "the majority of the students receiving assistance under the act are Black and Brown." There have been various other Acts enacted to try and aid impoverished youth with the chance to succeed. One of these Acts includes the No Child Left Behind Act, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). This Act was meant to increase the accountability of public schools and their teachers by creating standardized testing which gives an overview of the success of the school's ability to educate their students. Schools which repeatedly performed poorly could have increased attention and assistance from the federal government. One of the intended outcomes of the Act was to narrow the class and racial achievement gap in the United States by instituting common expectations for all students. Test scores have shown to be improving for minority children at the same rate as for Caucasian children, maintaining a gap.
Roland G. Fryer Jr., Roland G. Fryer, Jr., at Harvard University has noted that, "There is necessarily a trade-off between doing well and rejection by your peers when you come from a traditionally low-achieving group, especially when that group comes into contact with more outsiders." Therefore, not only are there economic and prehistoric causes of racial educational segregation, but there are also social notions that continue to be obstacles to be overcome before minority groups can achieve success in education.
Mississippi is one of the US states where some public schools still remain highly segregated just like the 1960s when discrimination against black people was very rampant. In many communities where black kids represent the majority, white children are the only ones who enroll in small private schools. The University of Mississippi, the state's flagship academic institution enrolls unreasonably few African-American and Latino young people. These schools are supposed to stand for excellence in terms of education and graduation but the opposite is happening. Private schools located in Jackson, Mississippi, Jackson City including small towns are populated by large numbers of white students. Continuing school segregation exists in Mississippi, South Carolina, and other communities where whites are separated from blacks.
Segregation is not limited to areas in the Deep South
The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...
. In New York City, 19 out of 32 school districts have fewer white students. The United States Supreme Court tried to deal with school segregation more than six decades ago but impoverished and colored students still do not have equal access to opportunities in education. In spite of this situation, the Government Accountability Office circulated a 108-page report that showed from 2000 up to 2014, the percentage of deprived black or Hispanic students in American K-12 public schools increased from nine to 16 percent.
Health
Another impact of hypersegregation can be found in the health of the residents of certain areas. Poorer inner-cities often lack the health care that is available in outside areas. That many inner-cities are so isolated from other parts of society also is a large contributor to the poor health often found in inner-city residents. The overcrowded living conditions in the inner-city caused by hypersegregation means that the spread of infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, occurs much more frequently. This is known as "epidemic injustice" because racial groups confined in a certain area are affected much more often than those living outside the area.
Poor inner-city residents also must contend with other factors that negatively affect health. Research has proven that in every major American city, hypersegregated blacks are far more likely to be exposed to dangerous levels of air toxins. Daily exposure to this polluted air means that African-Americans living in these areas are at greater risk of disease.
Crime
One area where hypersegregation seems to have the greatest effect is in violence experienced by residents. The number of violent crimes in the U.S. in general has fallen. The number of murders in the U.S. fell 9% from the 1980s to the 1990s. Despite this number, the crime rates in the hypersegregated inner-cities of America continued to rise. As of 1993, young African-American men are eleven times more likely to be shot to death and nine times more likely to be murdered than their white peers. Poverty, high unemployment, and broken families, all factors more prevalent in hypersegregated inner-cities, all contribute significantly to the unequal levels of violence experienced by African-Americans. Research has proven that the more segregated the surrounding white suburban ring is, the rate of violent crime in the inner-city will rise, but, likewise, crime in the outer area will drop.
Poverty
One study finds that an area's residential racial segregation increases metropolitan rates of black poverty and overall black-white income disparities, while decreasing rates of white poverty and racial inequality in the United States, inequality within the white population.
Single parenthood
One study finds that African Americans who live in segregated metro areas have a higher likelihood of single-parenthood than blacks who live in more integrated places.
Public spending
Research shows that segregation along racial lines contributes to public goods inequalities. Whites and blacks are vastly more likely to support different candidates for mayor than whites and blacks in more integrated places, which makes them less able to build consensus. The lack of consensus leads to lower levels of public spending.
Costs
In April 2017, the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago and the Urban Institute, a think-tank located in Washington, DC, released a study estimating that racial and economic segregation is costing the United States billions of dollars every year. Statistics (1990–2010) from at least 100 urban hubs were analyzed. This study reported that segregation affecting Blacks economically was associated with higher rates of homicide.
Caste system
Scholars including W. Lloyd Warner, Gerald Berreman, and Isabel Wilkerson have described the pervasive practice of racial segregation in America as an aspect of a Caste, caste system proper to the United States. In her 2020 book ''Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents'', Wilkerson described the system of racial segregation and discrimination in the United States as one example of a caste system by comparing it to the Caste system in India, caste systems of India and Nazi Germany. In her view, the three systems all exhibit the defining features of caste: divine or natural justification for the system, heritability of caste, endogamy, belief in purity, occupational hierarchy, dehumanization and stigmatization of lower castes, terror and cruelty as methods of enforcement and control, and the belief in the superiority of the dominant caste.
See also
* African-American history
* Civil rights movement
* Apartheid
* Auto-segregation
* Baseball color line
* Black flight, into suburbs
* Black Lives Matter
* Black nationalism
* Black Power
* Black separatism
* Black supremacy
* Desegregation
* Ethnopluralism
* Housing Segregation
* Index of racism-related articles
* Judicial aspects of race in the United States
* List of anti-discrimination acts
* Lynching in the United States
* Mass racial violence in the United States
* Nadir of American race relations
* Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
* ''Plessy v. Ferguson
''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality ...
''
* Race and health
* Racial integration
* Racial segregation
* Racial segregation in Atlanta
* Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces
* Racial segregation of churches in the United States
* Racial tension in Omaha, Nebraska
* Racism against African Americans in the U.S. military
* Racism in the United States
* Second-class citizen
* Segregated prom
* Separate but equal
* St. Augustine movement
* Symbolic racism
* Timeline of the civil rights movement
References
Sources
*
Further reading
* Bond, Horace Mann. "The Extent and Character of Separate Schools in the United States." ''Journal of Negro Education'' 4 (July 1935): 321–327. .
* Chafe, William Henry, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad, eds. ''Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South'' (2003).
* Glater, Jonathan D. and Alan Finder
School Diversity Based on Income Segregates Some
The New York Times, July 15, 2007.
* Graham, Hugh. ''The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972'' (1990)
* Guyatt, Nicholas.
Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation
'' New York: Basic Books, 2016.
* Hanbury, Dallas. 2020. ''The Development of Southern Public Libraries and the African American Quest for Library Access 1898-1963.'' Lanham: Lexington Books.
* Hannah-Jones, Nikole. "Worlds Apart". New York Times, New York Times Magazine, June 12, 2016, pp. 34–39 and 50–55.
* Hatfield, Edward.
Segregation
" ''New Georgia Encyclopedia,'' June 1, 2007.
* Hasday, Judy L. ''The Civil Rights Act of 1964: An End to Racial Segregation'' (2007).
* Lands, LeeAnn
"A City Divided"
''Southern Spaces'', December 29, 2009.
* Levy, Alan Howard.
Tackling Jim Crow: Racial Segregation in Professional Football
' (2003).
* Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy Denton.
American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
' (1993)
* Merry, Michael S. (2012). "Segregation and Civic Virtue" Educational Theory Journal 62(4), pp. 465–486.
* Myrdal, Gunnar.
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
' (1944).
* Ritterhouse, Jennifer. ''Growing Up Jim Crow: The Racial Socialization of Black and White Southern Children, 1890–1940.'' (2006).
* Sitkoff, Harvard. ''The Struggle for Black Equality'' (2008)
* Tarasawa, Beth.
New Patterns of Segregation: Latino and African American Students in Metro Atlanta High Schools
" ''Southern Spaces'', January 19, 2009.
* Woodward, C. Vann. ''The Strange Career :) of Jim Crow'' (1955).
* Yellin, Eric S. ''Racism in the Nation's Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson's America.'' Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
*
*
External links
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
File a housing discrimination complaint
"Remembering Jim Crow"
– Minnesota Public Radio (multi-media)
"Africans in America"
– PBS 4-Part Series
Black History Collection
"the Rise and Fall of Jim Crow"
4-part series from PBS distributed by California Newsreel
African-American Collection from Rhode Island State Archives
*
Segregation Incorporated
, presented by Destination Freedom
{{DEFAULTSORT:Racial Segregation in the United States
1880s establishments in the United States
1965 disestablishments in the United States
African-American history
History of racial segregation in the United States,
Anti-black racism in the United States
African-American-related controversies
Race-related controversies in the United States
United States caste system, *