Racial segregation in the United States

===In the North===
Formal segregation was enforced 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 (African American)|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.

{{blockquote|Despite the actions of abolitionists, life for free blacks was far from idyllic, due to northern racism. Most free blacks lived in racial enclaves in the major cities of the North: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. There, poor living conditions led to disease and death. In a Philadelphia study in 1846, practically all poor black infants died shortly after birth. Even wealthy blacks were prohibited from living in white neighborhoods due to whites' fear of declining property values.<ref name="AIA4">[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4narr3.html "Africans in America"] – PBS Series – Part 4 (2007)</ref> |}}

[[File:We want white tenants.jpg|thumb|White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the [[Sojourner Truth Project|Sojourner Truth housing project]] erected this sign. [[Detroit]], 1942.]]
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.<ref>Michael O. Emerson, Christian Smith (2001). ''Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America''. p. 42. Oxford University Press</ref> Deed restrictions and [[restrictive covenants]] became an important instrument for enforcing racial segregation in most towns and cities, becoming widespread in the 1920s.<ref name="CNN 2020">{{cite news |title=Racist language is still woven into home deeds across America. Erasing it isn't easy, and some don't want to |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/15/us/racist-deeds-covenants/index.html |access-date=December 5, 2020 |agency=CNN}}</ref> 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]] were racially restricted by such covenants.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kennedy|first=Stetson|url=http://www.stetsonkennedy.com/jim_crow_guide/index.html|title=Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was|year=1959|chapter=Who May Live Where|chapter-url=http://www.stetsonkennedy.com/jim_crow_guide/chapter6.htm}}</ref> Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include [[Chicago]], [[Baltimore]], [[Detroit]], [[Milwaukee]],<ref>{{cite web|author1=Michelle Maternowski|author2=Joy Powers|date=March 3, 2017|title=How Did Metro Milwaukee Become So Segregated?|url=https://www.wuwm.com/post/how-did-metro-milwaukee-become-so-segregated|website=WUWM.com|ref=WUWM 89.7 Milwaukee NPR}}</ref> [[Los Angeles]], [[Seattle]], and [[St. Louis]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Racial Restrictive Covenants: Enforcing Neighborhood Segregation in Seattle – Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project |url=https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants_report.htm |access-date=December 5, 2020 |agency=University of Washington}}</ref>

{{blockquote|"Said premises shall not be rented, leased, or conveyed to, or occupied by, any person other than of the white or Caucasian race."|[[Racial covenant]] for a home in [[Beverly Hills, California]].<ref name="CNN 2020"/>}}

[[Cicero, Illinois]], a [[sundown town]] adjacent to Chicago, for example, was made famous when Civil Rights advocate Rev. [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] led a march advocating open (race-unbiased) housing in 1966.<ref name="Loewen">{{cite book |last1=Sundown Towns A hidden dimension of American racism |first1=James W. |title=Loewen |date=2018 |publisher=The New Press |quote=The Civil Rights Movement rarely addressed northern sundown towns and suburbs directly, and when it did, such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1966 march for open housing in Cicero, Illinois, it usually failed.|location=New York, London |isbn=9781620974346 |pages=7, 394 |edition=2018 }}</ref>

{{blockquote|Northern blacks were forced to live in a white man's democracy, and while not legally enslaved, were subject to definition by their race. In their all-black communities, they continued to build their own churches and schools and to develop vigilance committees to protect members of the black community from hostility and violence.<ref name="AIA4"/>}}

[[File:No beer sold to indians.jpg|thumb|left|A sign posted above a bar that reads "No beer sold to Indians" ([[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]]). Birney, Montana, 1941.]]
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."<ref>{{cite book|title=Annual Report of the Hampton Negro Conference|chapter=The Economic Aspect of the Negro Problem|first=Anderson|last=Matthew|series=Hampton bulletinno. 9–10, 12–16 |editor1-last=Browne |editor1-first=Hugh |editor2-last=Kruse |editor2-first=Edwina |editor4-last=Moton |editor3-last=Walker |editor3-first=Thomas C. |editor4-first=Robert Russa |editor4-link=Robert Russa Moton |editor5-last=Wheelock |editor5-first=Frederick D. |publisher=Hampton Institute Press|location=[[Hampton, Virginia]]|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkQ9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39|hdl=2027/chi.14025588?urlappend=%3Bseq=43|volume=4|year=1900|page=39}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Brueggemann |first1=John |last2=Boswell |first2=Terry |s2cid=154406653 |year=1998 |title=Realizing Solidarity: Sources of Interracial Unionism During the Great Depression |journal=[[Work and Occupations]] |volume=25 |issue=4 |pages=436–482 |doi=10.1177/0730888498025004003 }}</ref>

School segregation in the North was also a major issue.<ref name=io>{{cite web |url=http://web.wm.edu/news/archive/index.php?id=5438 |title=Q&A with Douglas: Northern segregation |website=William and Mary College, Office of University Relations |date=December 13, 2005 |access-date=February 28, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140222054448/http://web.wm.edu/news/archive/index.php?id=5438 |archive-date=February 22, 2014 }}</ref> 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.<ref name=io /> Indiana also required school segregation by state law.<ref name=io /> During the 1940s, NAACP lawsuits quickly depleted segregation from the Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey southern areas.<ref name=io /> In 1949, Indiana officially repealed its school segregation law as well.<ref name=io /> The most common form of segregation in the northern states came from [[anti-miscegenation]] laws.<ref name=d.c />

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.<ref name="Oregon Exclusion">{{cite web |title=Black Exclusion Laws in Oregon |url=https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/exclusion_laws/#.XH_kUIhKhGM |access-date=March 6, 2019}}</ref><ref name="Blacks in Oregon">{{cite web |title=Blacks in Oregon |url=https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/blacks_in_oregon/#.XH_k_IhKhGM |access-date=March 6, 2019}}</ref>