Racial segregation in the United States, as
a general term, includes the segregation or
separation of access to facilities, services,
and opportunities such as housing, medical
care, education, employment, and transportation
along racial lines. The expression most often
refers to the legally or socially enforced
separation of African Americans from other
races, but also applies to the general discrimination
against people of color by white communities.
The term refers to the physical separation
and provision of so-called "separate but equal"
facilities, which were separate but rarely
equal, as well as to other manifestations
of racial discrimination, such as separation
of roles within an institution: for example,
in the United States Armed Forces before the
1950s, black units were typically separated
from white units but were led by white officers.
Signs were used to show non-whites where they
could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or
eat. Segregated facilities extended from white
only schools to white only graveyards.Legal
segregation of schools was stopped in the
U.S. by federal enforcement of a series of
Supreme Court decisions after Brown v. Board
of Education in 1954. All legally enforced
public segregation (segregation de jure) was
abolished by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It passed after demonstrations during the
Civil Rights Movement resulted in public opinion
turning against legally-enforced segregation.
De facto segregation—segregation "in fact",
without sanction of law—persists in varying
degrees to the present day. The contemporary
racial segregation seen in the United States
in residential neighborhoods has been shaped
by public policies, mortgage discrimination,
and redlining, among other factors. De facto
segregation results from the geographical
grouping of racial groups either as a result
of economic factors or choice (white flight).
Most often, this occurs in cities where the
residents of the inner city are African Americans
and the suburbs surrounding this inner core
are often European American residents. Douglas
Massey and Nancy A. Denton proposed the term
hypersegregation in their 1989 study of "American
Apartheid", when whites created black ghettos
during the first half of the 20th century
in order to isolate growing urban black populations.
== History ==
=== Reconstruction in the South ===
Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of
1867, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment
to the United States Constitution in 1870
providing the right to vote, and the Civil
Rights Act of 1875 forbidding racial segregation
in accommodations. As a result, Federal occupation
troops in the South assured blacks the right
to vote and to elect their own political leaders.
The Reconstruction amendments asserted the
supremacy of the national state and the formal
equality under the law of everyone within
it. 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 Blacks 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, conservative
whites 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 supported
the development and establishment of several
historically black colleges, such as Fisk
University and Shaw University. In this period,
a handful of northern colleges accepted black
students. Northern denominations and their
missionary associations especially established
private schools across the South to provide
secondary education. They provided a small
amount of collegiate work. Tuition was minimal,
so churches supported the colleges financially,
and also subsidized the pay of some teachers.
In 1900 churches—mostly based in the North—operated
247 schools for blacks across the South, with
a budget of about $1 million. They employed
1600 teachers and taught 46,000 students.
Prominent schools included Howard University,
a federal institution based in Washington;
Fisk University in Nashville, Atlanta University,
Hampton Institute in Virginia, and many others.
Most new colleges in the 19th century were
founded in northern states.
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") taking control
of all the southern states. 'Jim Crow' segregation
began somewhat later, in the 1880s. Disfranchisement
of the blacks 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 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.
=== Jim Crow era ===
The legitimacy of laws requiring segregation
of blacks 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 whites and blacks
from using railroad cars that were not assigned
to their race.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 whites, if they existed at all;
for example, most African-American schools
received less public funding per student than
nearby white schools. Segregation was never
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.Some streetcar 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" 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.
In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483
(1954), the Supreme Court outlawed segregated
public education facilities for blacks and
whites at the state level. The Civil Rights
Act of 1964 superseded all state and local
laws requiring segregation. However, compliance
with the new law was glacial at best, and
years and many court cases in lower courts
were necessary to enforce it.
=== New Deal era ===
The New Deal of the 1930s was racially segregated;
blacks 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). Blacks were hired
by the WPA as supervisors in the North; however
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 blacks and perpetuated
segregation. In its first few weeks of operation,
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps in
the North were integrated. By July 1935, however,
practically all the CCC camps in the United
States were segregated, and blacks were strictly
limited in the supervisory roles they were
assigned. Philip Klinkner and Rogers Smith
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 blacks and former
president of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP.
In 1937 when Senator Josiah Bailey Democrat
of 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.
== 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,
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 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 European American residents to
move to the suburbs in a case of white flight.
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, however,
and they became increasingly poor. This created
the inner-city ghettos that make up the core
of hypersegregation. Though the Civil Rights
Act of 1968 banned discrimination in sale
of homes, the norms set before the laws continue
to perpetuate this hypersegregation. Data
from the 2000 census shows that 29 metropolitan
areas displayed black-white hypersegregation;
in 2000. Two areas—Los Angeles and New York
City—displayed Hispanic-white hypersegregation.
No metropolitan area displayed hypersegregation
for Asians or for Native Americans.
== Racism and issues ==
For much of the 20th century, it was a popular
belief among many whites that the presence
of blacks in a white neighborhood would bring
down property values. The United States government
began making low-interest mortgages available
to families through the Federal Housing Administration
(FHA) and the Veteran's Administration. Black
families were legally entitled to these loans
but were sometimes denied these loans because
the planners behind this initiative labeled
many black neighborhoods throughout the country
as "in decline." The rules for loans did not
say that "black families cannot get loans";
rather, they said people 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 to all Americans and
mostly affected black residents of inner city
areas; most black families did in fact live
in the inner city areas of large cities and
almost entirely occupied these areas after
the end of World War II when whites began
to move to new suburbs.In addition to encouraging
white families to move to suburbs by providing
them loans to do so, the government uprooted
many established African American communities
by building elevated highways through their
neighborhoods. To build a highway, tens of
thousands of single-family homes were destroyed.
Because these properties were summarily declared
to be "in decline," families were given pittances
for their properties, and were forced into
federal housing called "the projects." To
build these projects, still more single family
homes were demolished.President Woodrow Wilson
did not oppose segregation practices by autonomous
department heads of the federal Civil Service,
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 would sometimes be required
to eat separately, go to separate schools,
use separate public toilets, park benches,
train, buses, and water fountains, etc. In
some locales, in addition to segregated seating,
it could be forbidden for stores or restaurants
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 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.
Parks' act of defiance became an important
symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement
and Parks became an international icon of
resistance to racial segregation.
Segregation was also pervasive in housing.
State constitutions (for example, that of
California) 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 declared
municipal resident segregation ordinances
unconstitutional. In response, whites resorted
to the restrictive covenant, 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, the U.S. Supreme Court
finally ruled that such covenants were unenforceable
in a court of law. However, residential segregation
patterns had already become established in
most American cities, and have often persisted
up to the present (see white flight and Redlining).
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, resenting African Americans'
involvement in local government and incensed
by an editorial in an African-American newspaper
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
office holders, 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,
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.
With the migration to the North of many black
workers at the turn of the 20th century, and
the friction that occurred between white and
black workers during this time, segregation
was and continues to be a phenomenon in northern
cities as well as in the South. Whites generally
allocate tenements as housing to the poorest
blacks. It would be well to remember, though,
that while racism had to be legislated out
of the South, many in the North, including
Quakers and others who ran the Underground
Railroad, were ideologically opposed to Southerners'
treatment of blacks. By the same token, many
white Southerners have a claim to closer relationships
with blacks than wealthy northern whites,
regardless of the latter's stated political
persuasion.Anti-miscegenation laws (also known
as miscegenation laws) prohibited whites and
non-whites from marrying each other. These
state laws always targeted marriage between
whites and blacks, and in some states also
prohibited marriages between whites and Native
Americans or Asians. As one of many examples
of such state laws, Utah's marriage law had
an anti-miscegenation component that was passed
in 1899 and repealed in 1963. It prohibited
marriage between a white and anyone considered
a Negro (Black American), mulatto (half black),
quadroon (one-quarter black), octoroon (one-eighth
black), "Mongolian" (East Asian), or member
of the "Malay race" (a classification used
to refer to Filipinos). No restrictions were
placed on marriages between people who were
not "white persons." (Utah Code, 40-1-2, C.
L. 17, §2967 as amended by L. 39, C. 50;
L. 41, Ch. 35.).
In World War I, blacks served in the United
States Armed Forces in segregated units. Black
soldiers were often poorly trained and equipped,
and were often put on the frontlines in suicide
missions. The 369th Infantry (formerly 15th
New York National Guard) Regiment distinguished
themselves, and were known as the "Harlem
Hellfighters".
The U.S. military was still heavily segregated
in World War II. The Army Air Corps (forerunner
of the Air Force) and the Marines had no blacks
enlisted in their ranks. There were blacks
in the Navy Seabees. The army had only five
African-American officers. In addition, no
African American would receive the Medal of
Honor 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, 99th
Fighter Squadron, and also saw the segregated
183rd Engineer Combat Battalion participate
in the liberation of Jewish survivors at Buchenwald.
Despite the institutional policy of racially
segregated training for enlisted members and
in tactical units; Army policy dictated that
black and white soldiers would train together
in officer candidate schools (beginning in
1942). Thus, the 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 people of Japanese descent
(whether citizens or not) were placed in internment
camps. Hundreds of people of German and 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
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, ending segregation
in the United States Armed Forces.
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. A contract
for a 1965 Beatles concert at the Cow Palace
in 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
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 racial
compositions of inmates in the American prison
system has led to concerns that the U.S. Justice
system furthers a "new apartheid".
=== Scientific ===
The intellectual root of Plessy v. Ferguson,
the landmark United States Supreme Court decision
upholding the constitutionality of racial
segregation, under the doctrine of "separate
but equal", was, in part, tied to the scientific
racism of the era. However, the popular support
for the decision was more likely a result
of the racist beliefs held by most whites
at the time. Later, the court decision Brown
v. Board of Education would reject 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 system, after the name of a stereotypical
1830s black minstrel show character. Sometimes,
as in Florida's Constitution of 1885, segregation
was mandated by state constitutions.
Racial segregation became the law in most
parts of the American South until the Civil
Rights Movement. These laws, known as Jim
Crow laws, 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.
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.
State laws prohibiting interracial marriage
("miscegenation") had been enforced throughout
the South and in many Northern states since
the Colonial era. During 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" came to power.
The Supreme Court declared such laws constitutional
in 1883. This verdict was overturned only
in 1967 by Loving v. Virginia.
The voting rights of blacks were systematically
restricted or denied through suffrage laws,
such as the introduction of 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. Only whites could vote in Democratic
Party primary contests. Where and when black
people did manage to vote in numbers, their
votes were negated by systematic gerrymander
of electoral boundaries.
=== 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.
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.
While it is commonly thought that segregation
was a southern phenomenon, segregation was
also to be found in "the North". The Chicago
suburb of Cicero, for example, was made famous
when Civil Rights advocate Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr. led a march advocating open (race-unbiased)
housing.
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.
In the 1930s, however, 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 near the Mason–Dixon line
enforced school segregation, despite state
laws outlawing the practice of it. Indiana
also required school segregation by state
law. During the 1940s, however, 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.
=== 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 constitutional ruling,
segregation was enforced in horse racing,
a sport which had previously seen many African
American jockeys win Triple Crown and other
major races. Widespread segregation would
also exist in bicycle and automobile racing.
In 1890, however, segregation would lessen
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 would also allow African
Americans on to play their football teams
as well.Segregation was also hardly enforced
in boxing. In 1908, Jack Johnson, would become
the first African American to win the World
Heavyweight Title. However, Johnson's personal
life (i.e. his publicly acknowledged relationships
with white women) made him very unpopular
among many Caucasians throughout the world.
It was not until 1937, when Joe Louis defeated
German boxer Max Schmeling, that the general
American public would embrace, and greatly
accept, 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,
however, the NFL, now the only major football
league in the United States, reversed its
limited integration policy and completely
segregated the entire league. However, the
NFL color barrier would permanently break
in 1946, when the Los Angeles Rams signed
Kenny Washington and Woody Strode and the
Cleveland Browns hired Marion Motley and Bill
Wallis.
Prior to the 1930s, basketball would also
suffer a great deal of discrimination as well.
Black and whites played mostly in different
leagues and usually were forbidden from playing
in inter-racial games. However, the popularity
of the African American basketball team The
Harlem Globetrotters would alter the American
public's acceptance of African Americans in
basketball. By the end of the 1930s, many
northern colleges and universities would allow
African Americans to play on their teams.
In 1942, the color barrier for basketball
was removed after Bill Jones and three other
African American basketball players joined
the Toledo Jim White Chevrolet NBL franchise
and five Harlem Globetrotters joined the Chicago
Studebakers.In 1947, segregation in professional
sports would suffer a very big blow after
the baseball color line was broken, when Negro
Leagues baseball player Jackie Robinson joined
the Brooklyn Dodgers and had a breakthrough
season.By the end of 1949, however, only fifteen
states had no segregation laws in effect.
and only eighteen states had outlawed segregation
in public 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.
== Contemporary segregation ==
Black-White segregation is consistently declining
for most metropolitan areas and cities, though
there are geographical differences. In 2000,
for instance, the 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 remains a residentially
segregated society in which blacks and whites
still often inhabit vastly different neighborhoods.Redlining
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 highways
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
to the suburbs, and in the foundation of numerous
segregation academies and 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 towards
a trend of greater integration across most
of the United States.
=== Residential segregation ===
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 "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 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)"
However, blacks were forced by 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 propose 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 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 city, 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 segregation
===
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 as followed:
==== 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.
==== 1929–53 ====
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 African-Americans
continuing to migrate towards Northern urban
areas, they were faced with the challenge
of suffering from high unemployment rates,
due to non-minorities willing to do work that
African Americans would previously take part
in. At this time the entire banking industry,
in the U.S., was suffering however, these
banks suffered even more due to being smaller,
having higher closure rates, as well as lower
rates of loan repayment. The first groups
of banks invested their finances back into
the Black community, where as banks established
during this period invested their finances
mainly in mortgage loans, fraternal societies,
and U.S. government bonds.
==== 1954–69 ====
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 however, 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.
==== 1970–79 ====
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 crippled the African-American community,
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, however all banks were 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: 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.
== 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 do attend universities
continue to suffer academically due to the
stress they suffer from having 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-cityThe
percentage of black children who now go to
integrated public schools is at its lowest
level since 1968. 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 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.
In higher education some groups have contested
racially separatist policies in college dormitories.
In 2002, the New York Civil Rights Coalition
released "The Stigma of Inclusion, Racial
Paternalism and Separatism in Higher Education."
The report underscored patterns of self-segregation
on college campuses that the authors alleged
were encouraged by college administrators.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. 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 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 of 2001 (NCLB). This
Act was meant to increase the accountability
of public schools and their teachers by creating
standardized testing which would give an overview
of the success of the school's ability to
educate their students. Schools which repeatedly
performed poorly would 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 populations,
however, they are improving at the same rate
for Caucasian children as well. This Act therefore,
has done little to close the educational gap
between Caucasian and minority children.There
has also been an issue with minority populations
becoming educated because to a fear of being
accused of "Acting White." It is a hard definition
to pin down, however, this is a negative term
predominantly used by African-Americans that
showing interest in one's studies is a betrayal
of the African-American culture as one is
trying to be a part of white society rather
than staying true to his/her roots. 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 youngsters. These schools are supposed
to stand for excellence in terms of education
and graduation but the opposite is happening.
Private schools located in 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 but places like New York as well.
The state was more segregated for black students
compared to any other Southern state. There
is a case of double segregation because students
have become isolated both by race and household
income. 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 European
American 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
European American 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 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 report
reported that segregation affecting Blacks
economically was associated with higher rates
of homicide.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Bond, Horace Mann. "The Extent and Character
of Separate Schools in the United States."
Journal of Negro Education 4(July 1935):321–27.
in JSTOR.
Chafe, William Henry, Raymond Gavins, and
Robert Korstad, eds. Remembering Jim Crow:
African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated
South (2003).
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.
Hannah-Jones, Nikole. "Worlds Apart". New
York Times Magazine, June 12, 2016, pp. 34–39
and 50-55.
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),
pg. 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.
Vickers, Lu; Wilson-Graham, Cynthia (2015).
Remembering Paradise Park : tourism and segregation
at Silver Springs. University Press of Florida.
ISBN 978-0813061528.
== 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
