Racial segregation in the United States

==Reconstruction==
{{main|Reconstruction era}}
{{See also|Black Codes (United States)|Civil rights movement (1865–1896)}}

Congress passed the [[Reconstruction Acts]] of 1867, [[Ratification|ratified]] the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] in 1870, granting African Americans the right to vote, and it also enacted the [[Civil Rights Act of 1875]] forbidding racial segregation in accommodations. Federal occupation in the South helped allow many black people 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.<ref name="Fields">{{Cite book| author = Barbara J. Fields| author-link=Barbara J. Fields | chapter = Ideology and Race in American History| title = Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward| editor = J. Morgan Kousser| editor2 = James M. McPherson| publisher = [[Oxford University Press]]| location = New York| year = 1982| isbn = 978-0195030754| page = 163}}</ref>

When the [[Republican Party (United States)|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 [[New Orleans]]. After the Republicans lost power in the mid-1870s, [[Southern Democrats]] retained the public school systems but sharply cut their funding.
<ref>{{cite book|author=Richard Zuczek|title=Reconstruction: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ppDcCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA172|year=2015|publisher=ABC-CLIO|page=172|isbn=978-1610699181}}</ref>

Almost all private academies and colleges in the South were strictly segregated by race.<ref>[[Berea College]] in Kentucky was the main exception until state law in 1904 forced its segregation. {{cite journal|jstor=23376786|title=Berea College and the Day Law|journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society|volume=66|issue=1|pages=35–52|last1=Heckman|first1=Richard Allen|last2=Hall|first2=Betty Jean|year=1968}}</ref>  The [[American Missionary Association]] supported the development and establishment of several [[historically black colleges]] including [[Fisk University]] and [[Shaw University]]. 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&nbsp;million. They employed 1600 teachers and taught 46,000 students.<ref>{{cite book|title=Annual Report of the Hampton Negro Conference|author=Hampton Negro Conference|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]]|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jUQ9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA59|hdl=2027/chi.14025704?urlappend=%3Bseq=65|volume=5|year=1901|page=59}} [https://archive.org/details/reportofhamptonn00hamp/page/59/mode/1up Alt URL]</ref><ref>Joe M. Richardson, ''Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890'' (1986).</ref> Prominent schools included [[Howard University]], a private, federally chartered institution based in Washington, D.C.; [[Fisk University]] in Nashville, [[Atlanta University]], [[Hampton Institute]] 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 (United States)|Republican Party]] in the South splintered and lost support, leading to the conservatives (calling themselves "[[Redeemers]]") taking control of all the Southern states. [[Jim Crow laws|'Jim Crow' segregation]]  began somewhat later, in the 1880s.<ref>C. Vann Woodward, ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow'' (3rd ed. 1974)</ref>  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]] 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.<ref>{{cite web |first=Paul D. |last=Casdorph |title=Lily-White Movement |work=[[Handbook of Texas Online]] |publisher=[[Texas State Historical Association]] |url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/wfl01 |access-date=July 23, 2017 |date=June 15, 2010 }}</ref> 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]].<ref name="Robinson">{{Cite book| author = Armstead L. Robinson| chapter = Full of Faith, Full of Hope: African-American Experience From Emancipation to Segregation| title = African-American Reader: Essays On African-American History, Culture, and Society| editor = William R. Scott| editor2 = William G. Shade| publisher = U.S. Department of State| location = [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]]| pages = 105–123| year = 2005| oclc = 255903231}}</ref>{{Rp|117}}

===Jim Crow era===
{{main|Nadir of American race relations|Jim Crow laws|Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era}}
{{Further|Civil rights movement (1896–1954)}}
[[File:Segregated cinema entrance3.jpg|A black man goes into the "colored" entrance of a [[movie theater]] in [[Belzoni, Mississippi]], 1939.<ref>{{cite web| author = Marion Post Wolcott| title = Negro going in colored entrance of movie house on Saturday afternoon, Belzoni, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi| work = Prints & Photographs Online Catalog| publisher = [[Library of Congress]] Home|date=October 1939| url = https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998013484/PP/| access-date = January 29, 2009}}</ref>|thumb]]

The legitimacy of laws requiring segregation of black people was upheld by the [[U.S. Supreme Court]] in the 1896 case of ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'', 163 U.S. 537. The Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of a Louisiana statute that required railroad companies to provide "[[separate but equal]]" accommodations for white and black passengers, and prohibited white people and black people from using railroad cars that were not assigned to their race.<ref>[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=163&page=537 Plessy v. Ferguson], 163 U.S. 537, 540 (1896) (quoting the Louisiana statute). From Findlaw. Retrieved on December 30, 2012.</ref>

''Plessy'' thus allowed segregation, which became standard throughout the [[southern United States]], and represented the institutionalization of the [[Jim Crow]] 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.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/summer-2004/jim-crows-schools|title=Jim Crow's Schools|date=August 8, 2014|work=American Federation of Teachers|access-date=May 29, 2018|language=en}}</ref>

President [[Woodrow Wilson]], a Southern Democrat, initiated the segregation of federal workplaces in 1913.<ref name="Gardner2002">{{cite book|author=Michael R. Gardner|title=Harry Truman and Civil Rights|url=https://archive.org/details/harrytrumancivil00gard|url-access=registration|year=2002|publisher=SIU Press|isbn=978-0809388967|pages=[https://archive.org/details/harrytrumancivil00gard/page/108 108]–}}</ref>

Some [[streetcar]] companies did not segregate voluntarily. It took 15 years for the government to break down their resistance.<ref name=roback>{{cite journal |first=Jennifer |last=Roback |title=The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars |journal=Journal of Economic History |volume=56 |issue=4 |year=1986 |pages=893–917 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700050634 |s2cid=154950603 }}</ref>

On at least six occasions over nearly 60 years, the Supreme Court held, either explicitly or by necessary implication, that the "separate but equal" rule announced in Plessy was the correct rule of law,<ref>[https://casetext.com/case/cumming-v-county-board-of-education Cumming v. Board of Education], 175 U.S. 528 (1899); [[Berea College v. Kentucky]], 211 U.S. 45 (1908); [[Gong Lum v. Rice]], 275 U.S. 78 (1927); [[Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada]], 305 U.S. 337 (1938); [[Sipuel v. Board of Regents]], 332 U.S. 631 (1948); [[Sweatt v. Painter]], 339 U.S. 629 (1950)</ref> 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]]. In ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'', '''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]] 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. {{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

In parts of the United States, especially in the South, signs were used to indicate where African Americans could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Litwack |first1=Leon F. |author1-link=Leon Litwack |title=Jim Crow Blues |journal=[[Organization of American Historians|OAH Magazine of History]] |date=January 2004 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=7–11, 58 |doi=10.1093/maghis/18.2.7 |jstor=25163654 |url=https://jstor.org/stable/pdf/25163654.pdf |access-date=March 18, 2022 |quote=The demands made by Jim Crow worked their way into the daily routines of African American men and women. ... The signs instructed blacks where they could legally walk, sit, rest, eat, drink, and entertain themselves. They punctuated the southern landscape, appearing over the entrances to parks, theaters, boarding houses, railroad station waiting rooms, toilets, and water fountains....  Movie houses were becoming increasingly popular and Jim Crow demanded  not only separate ticket windows and entrances but also separate seating, usually in the balcony—what came to  be known as the 'buzzard roost' and 'nigger heaven.'}}</ref><ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38536668 "Barack Obama legacy: Did he improve US race relations?"]. BBC. Retrieved June 5, 2020</ref>

===New Deal era===
[[File:Roanoke,_Virginia_HOLC_Redlining_Map.jpg|thumb|277x277px|Roanoke, Virginia [[Home Owners' Loan Corporation|HOLC]] [[redlining]] map]]

With the passing of [[National Housing Act of 1934]], the United States government began to make low-interest mortgages available to families through the [[Federal Housing Administration]] (FHA).

Black families were explicitly denied these loans. While technically legally allowed these loans, in practice they were barred. This was because eligibility for federally backed loans was largely determined by [[redlining]] maps created by the [[Home Owners' Loan Corporation|HOLC]].<ref name="Rothstein-2018">{{Cite book |last=Rothstein |first=Richard |title=The Color of Law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America |date=2018 |publisher=Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company |isbn=978-1-63149-453-6 |edition= |location=New York London}}</ref>

Any neighborhood with "inharmonious racial groups" would either be marked red or yellow, depending on the proportion of Black residents.<ref name="Rothstein-2018"/> This was explicitly stated within the FHA underwriting manual that the HOLC used as for its maps.<ref>{{cite book |title=Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act With Revisions to February 1938 |title-link=National Housing Act of 1934 |publisher=[[Federal Housing Administration]] |location=Washington, D.C. |chapter=Part II, Section 9, Rating of Location |quote=Recommended restrictions should include provision for the following: Prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended [...] Schools should be appropriate to the needs of the new community and they should not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups |chapter-url=http://wbhsi.net/~wendyplotkin/DeedsWeb/fha38.html |access-date=June 7, 2023 |archive-date=December 20, 2012 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121220101009/http://wbhsi.net/~wendyplotkin/DeedsWeb/fha38.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>
[[File:Philadelphia_HOLC_Redlining_Zone_Descriptions,_1937.pdf|page=100|thumb|450x450px|Page of HOLC document from [[c:File:Home_Owners'_Loan_Corporation_Philadelphia_redlining_map.jpg|Philadelphia redlining map]]. Zone D20, one of the red areas.{{Br|2}}It lists the 'Detrimental Influences' as a "concentration of Negros and Italians."]]
For neighborhood building projects, a similar requirement existed. The federal government required them to be explicitly segregated to be federally backed.<ref name="Rothstein-2018"/> The federal government's financial backing also required the use of [[Covenant (law)#United States|racially restrictive covenants]], that banned white homeowners from reselling their house to any black buyers, effectively locking Black Americans out of the housing market.<ref name="Rothstein-2018" />

The government encouraged white families to move into suburbs by granting them loans, which were refused to Black Americans. Many established African American communities were disrupted by the routing of [[interstate highways]] through their neighborhoods.<ref>{{Cite news |last=King |first=Noel |date=April 7, 2021 |title=A Brief History Of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways |work=NPR News |url=https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways}}</ref> In order to build these elevated highways, the government destroyed tens of thousands of single-family homes.{{Citation needed|date=November 2014}} 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.<ref>{{cite web |title=When a City Turns White, What Happens to Its Black History? |url=https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/158487 |access-date=May 29, 2018 |website=historynewsnetwork.org |date=February 22, 2015 |language=en}}</ref>

The [[New Deal]] of the 1930s as a whole 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]] (WPA); it operated segregated units, as did its youth affiliate, the [[National Youth Administration]] (NYA).<ref name="Lumpkins2008">{{cite book|author=Charles L. Lumpkins|title=American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q8_ZBcXXRAYC&pg=PA179|year=2008|publisher=Ohio UP|page=179|isbn=978-0821418031}}</ref> Black people were hired by the WPA as supervisors in the North; of 10,000 WPA supervisors in the South, only 11 were black.<ref>{{cite book|author=Cheryl Lynn Greenberg|title=To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression|year=2009|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |page=59|isbn=978-0742551893}}</ref> Historian Anthony Badger argues, "New Deal programs in the South routinely discriminated against black people and perpetuated segregation."<ref>{{cite book|author=Anthony J. Badger|title=New Deal / New South: An Anthony J. Badger Reader|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VmXIZEtMYyQC&pg=PA38|year=2011|publisher=U. of Arkansas Press|page=38|isbn=978-1610752770}}</ref>  In its first few weeks of operation, [[Civilian Conservation Corps]] (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.<ref>{{cite book|author=Kay Rippelmeyer|title=The Civilian Conservation Corps in Southern Illinois, 1933–1942|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ffupBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA98|year=2015|publisher=Southern Illinois Press|pages=98–99|isbn=978-0809333653}}</ref> [[Philip Klinkner]] and [[Rogers Smith]] argue that "even the most prominent racial liberals in the New Deal did not dare to criticize Jim Crow."<ref>{{cite book|author1=Philip A. Klinkner|author2=Rogers M. Smith|title=The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780226443416|url-access=registration|year=2002|publisher=U of Chicago Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780226443416/page/130 130]|isbn=978-0226443416}}</ref>  Secretary of the Interior [[Harold L. Ickes|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]], 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.<ref>Harold Ickes, ''The secret diary of Harold L. Ickes Vol. 2: The inside struggle, 1936–1939'' (1954) p 115</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=David L. Chappell|title=A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8jomttdSV5YC&pg=PA9|year=2009|pages=9–11|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0807895573}}</ref>

The New Deal, nonetheless, also provided federal benefits to Black Americans. 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 (African American)|Great Migration]].<ref name="Leuchtenburg">{{Cite web |last=Leuchtenburg |first=William E. |author-link=William Leuchtenburg |date=October 4, 2016 |title=Franklin D. Roosevelt: The American Franchise  |url=https://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/the-american-franchise |access-date=April 11, 2021 |website=millercenter.org |publisher=UVA Miller Center |language=en}}</ref>  Influenced in part by the "[[Black Cabinet]]" advisors and the [[March on Washington Movement]], just prior to America's entry into World War II, Roosevelt issued [[Executive Order 8802]], the first anti-discrimination order at the federal level and established the [[Fair Employment Practices Committee]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=FDR on racial discrimination, 1942  |url=https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/fdr-racial-discrimination-1942 |access-date=April 11, 2021 |website=www.gilderlehrman.org |publisher=[[Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History]]}}</ref><ref name="Leuchtenburg"/>  Roosevelt's successor, President [[Harry Truman]] appointed the [[President's Committee on Civil Rights]], and issued Executive Order 9980 and [[Executive Order 9981]] providing for desegregation throughout the federal government and the armed forces.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Johnson |first1=Jennifer  |last2=Hussey |first2=Michael  |title=Executive Orders 9980 and 9981: Ending segregation in the Armed Forces and the Federal workforce – Pieces of History |url=https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2014/05/19/executive-orders-9980-and-9981-ending-segregation-in-the-armed-forces-and-the-federal-workforce/ |access-date=April 11, 2021 |website=National Archives |date=May 19, 2014 |language=en-US}}</ref>