Racial segregation in the United States

===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>