Racial segregation in the United States

===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>