Segregation in the US
From WikiDemocracy
Racial Segregation in the United States
Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment, and transportation have been systematically separated in the United States based on racial categorizations. Notably, racial segregation in the United States was the legally and/or socially enforced separation of African Americans from whites, as well as the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority communities. While mainly referring to the physical separation and provision of separate facilities, it can also refer to other manifestations such as prohibitions against interracial marriage (enforced with anti-miscegenation laws), and the separation of roles within an institution. The U.S. Armed Forces were formally segregated until 1948, as black units were separated from white units but were still typically led by white officers.
In the 1857 Dred Scott case (Dred Scott v. Sandford), the U.S. Supreme Court found that Black people were not and could never be U.S. citizens and that the U.S. Constitution and civil rights did not apply to them. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, but it was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1883 in the Civil Rights Cases. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), so long as "separate but equal" facilities were provided, a requirement that was rarely met. The doctrine's applicability to public schools was unanimously overturned in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In the following years, the court further ruled against racial segregation in several landmark cases including Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), which helped bring an end to the Jim Crow laws.
FROM SLAVERY TO SEGREGATION
Today, the story of the American Civil Rights Movement is familiar: courageous activists waged an epic struggle, faced great risks, and suffered tragic losses to achieve victories that forever changed the nation. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott; the murder of Emmett Till; the Selma to Montgomery March; and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 are well-known milestones in the movement.
The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated the United States
by Richard Rothstein 14/11/17 ZINN EDUCATION PROJECT
Racial segregation characterizes every metropolitan area in the United States and bears responsibility for our most serious social and economic problems — it corrupts our criminal justice system, exacerbates economic inequality, and produces large academic gaps between white and African American schoolchildren.
Racial Segregation in the Church
by Equal Justice Initiative 01/01/16
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery often were justified by religious leaders who argued that slave owners were performing a noble Christian duty by converting and enslaving Africans, who were inferior to whites in the eyes of the church. After the Civil War, white churches supported racial hierarchy and segregation, forcing Black people to form their own churches.
Jim Crow Laws
The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. "Whites Only" and "Colored" signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
On a hilltop overlooking Montgomery is the nation’s first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of Black Americans who were enslaved, terrorized by lynching, humiliated by racial segregation, and presumed guilty and dangerous.
The long history of racism against Asian Americans in the U.S.
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-long-history-of-racism-against-asian-americans-in-the-u-s by Adrian De Leon PBS NEWS]
In the face of rising anti-Asian racist actions – now at about 100 reported cases per day – Yang implores Asian Americans to “wear red, white, and blue” in their efforts to combat the virus.
The Widespread Failure to Preserve African American History
Only 2% of the 95,000 entries on the National Register of Historic Places—“the list of sites deemed worthy of preservation by the federal government”—focus on the experiences of African Americans, reporting in the latest issue of The New Yorker reveals. This widespread failure to preserve African American history is itself rooted in America’s history of racial injustice.
Lynching in America Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror
EJI researchers documented 4075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950—at least 800 more lynchings of Black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date.
INTRODUCTION
In the 1950s and 1960s, heroic civil rights activists staged a valiant revolt against racial inequality that compelled our nation to change some of its most racially offensive practices and policies. The Civil Rights Movement profoundly changed the character of American society and opened doors for people of color that had too long been barred by bigotry and ignorance. There has been substantial progress on a range of issues as a result of increased participation by non-white people in the political process. Diversity has become a demand that has strengthened the political, social, cultural, and economic landscape in significant and visible ways.
Community Remembrance Project
As a law office, the Equal Justice Initiative has been dedicated to representing clients sentenced to death and condemned to die in prison, challenging inhumane conditions of confinement, and working to expose racial bias in the criminal justice system for more than 30 years. This work has provided a first-hand view of the many ways our nation’s current era of mass incarceration is deeply rooted in America’s history of racial injustice, and has inspired us to launch a project documenting and memorializing the eras of enslavement, racial terror lynching, and segregation.
60 years after Brown v. Board, school segregation isn’t yet American history
Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the question of how far we’ve come in eliminating segregated education is not a simple one. Gwen Ifill leads a discussion with Cheryl Brown Henderson of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research, Sheryll Cashin of Georgetown University, Catherine Lhamon of the Department of Education and Ron Brownstein of Atlantic Media.
Introduction
In the years following World War I, America was gripped by the fear that the Communist Revolution that had taken place in Russia would spread to the United States. As is often the case when fear outweighs rational debate, civil liberties paid the price. In November 1919 and January 1920, in what notoriously became known as the “Palmer Raids,” Attorney General Mitchell Palmer began rounding up and deporting so-called radicals. Thousands of people were arrested without warrants and without regard to constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure. Those arrested were brutally treated and held in horrible conditions.
In Southern schools, segregation and inequality aren’t just history — they’re reality
The Justice Department recently hailed a federal court ruling affirming plans to desegregate schools in Cleveland, Mississippi. Desegregation, the court ruled, allows students to learn, play and thrive together.
School choice, history of segregation collide as Florida county consolidates rural schools
by Kate Payne 22/8/24 PBS NEWS
In the Florida panhandle, one tiny district plans to consolidate its last three stand-alone elementary schools into one campus because there aren’t enough students to cover the costs of keeping the doors open. But the Madison County School District’s decision to do so has exposed tensions around race in a community where for years some white families have resisted integrating public schools.
Supreme Court Decision Sparks Massive White Resistance to School Integration
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional, overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine in place since 1896 and sparking massive resistance among white Americans committed to racial inequality.
Racial Justice
American history begins with the creation of a myth to absolve white settlers of the genocide of Native Americans: the false belief that nonwhite people are less human than white people. This belief in racial hierarchy survived slavery’s abolition, fueled racial terror lynchings, demanded legally codified segregation, and spawned our mass incarceration crisis.
When Privatization Means Segregation: Setting the Record Straight on School Vouchers
In recent weeks, the issue of private school vouchers has taken center stage in debates over the future of American education. Policy proposals to use public funds for private school tuition vouchers have a long history, dating back to a seminal 1955 essay by Milton Friedman. Over the last twenty-five years, small voucher programs have been established in several states, including Indiana, Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as in Washington, D.C.
American Apartheid
by Jacqueline Jones 2017 DISSENT
The United States today is less a nation of citizens equal under the law than a nation of citizens living in unequal zip codes. Where we live is both a cause and effect of individuals’ and households’ wealth, health, and wellbeing—the kinds of jobs we have; the quality of our housing, education, medical insurance, and police and fire protection; crime rates and whether or not our neighbors are incarcerated; and bonds of family and community. An understanding of U.S. housing patterns, then—how they came to be so segregated, and why they remain so—is critical to the way we think about this country’s ideal of democracy and reality of unequal citizenship.
Investigation Shows Inequality in School Funding Is a Legacy of Racial Injustice
In Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case striking down racial segregation in schools, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that the opportunity of an education “where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” Less than two decades later, in 1973, the Court abandoned this commitment to equal education when it held in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez that there is no constitutional right to equal funding in education.
Our House Divided: What U.S. Schools Don’t Teach About U.S.-Style Apartheid
by Richard Rothstein 15/12/13 ZINN EDUCATION PROJECT
We have paid great attention to Nelson Mandela’s call for forgiveness and reconciliation between South Africa’s former white rulers and its exploited Black majority. But we have paid less attention to the condition that Mandela insisted must underlie reconciliation — truth. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Mandela established, and that Archbishop Desmond Tutu chaired, was designed to contribute to cleansing wounds of the country’s racist history by exposing it to a disinfecting bright light.
School Segregation in Alabama
Fifty-five years after Governor George Wallace declared his commitment to preserving white supremacy and maintaining “segregation forever,” Alabama’s state constitution still mandates racially segregated schools. Adopted in 1901, the Alabama constitution was designed to disenfranchise African Americans and maintain the Jim Crow system of the South. The constitution instituted discriminatory voting laws, including literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and poll taxes. It also required that public education be racially segregated. Section 256 of the Alabama constitution states that “separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children.”
Jan. 5, 1931: Lemon Grove Incident
by Robert R. Alvarez Jr. ZINN EDUCATION PROJECT
[Some of] the earliest court cases concerning school desegregation occurred in the Southwest and California in the 1930s. In these cases Mexican immigrants and their communities were the targeted groups of segregation by school officials. A case of particular importance occurred in San Diego County during the 1930s, in the then rural community of Lemon Grove.
Racial segregation of Latino students continues with English-only laws
For decades, states have used English-language skills as an excuse to segregate Latino students. In the past few years, California and Massachusetts have repealed their English-only education laws.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation — that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies.
SEGREGATION FOREVER”: LEADERS OF WHITE SUPREMACY
The influential and widespread rejection of racial equality by individuals, communities, officials, and institutions followed in the tradition of earlier generations of white supremacists who stood determined to thwart civil rights progress. That common cause inspired collective action among white citizens in many parts of the country that vaulted new leaders to national prominence and into powerful political positions where many outlasted the movement itself.
Resistance to School Desegregation
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education struck down racial segregation in public schools. In March 1956, 101 of 128 Southern congressmen signed “The Southern Manifesto,” denouncing the decision. Many Southern communities followed their lead, resisting integration with protest and violence.
How Real Estate Segregated America
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor 2018 DISSENT
In a year of many anniversaries, two in particular stand out with respect to the housing crisis facing the United States today. The first is the passage of Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, more commonly known as the Fair Housing Act. In some ways, the legislation bitterly acknowledged the role of housing discrimination in keeping African Americans in a subordinate social position. Excluding Black people from white neighborhoods, while simultaneously disinvesting in Black communities, has kept them out of the best-funded schools and highest-paying jobs. Housing discrimination was a linchpin of Black inequality in American society, and the Fair Housing Act held out the promise of undoing it by banning racial discrimination in the renting, financing, and selling of housing.
Desegregating blood: A civil rights struggle to remember
by Thomas A. Guglielmo homas 4/2/18 PBS NEWS
Having heard the “soul-stirring” appeals for blood donors on her radio, she was determined to do her part. But when she arrived at the center, the supervisor turned her away. “Orders from the National Offices,” he explained, “barred Negro blood donors at this time.”
The Consequences of Chicago’s Segregated Housing History
Today, we're focusing on Chicago — the country's third largest (and one of the most diverse) cities, and a city that has been a blueprint for housing segregation. While the discriminatory practice of racial redlining was officially outlawed in 1968, the practice still reverberates throughout the city today. For every dollar loaned by banks in Chicago’s white neighborhoods, they invest just 12 cents in the city’s Black neighborhoods, and 13 cents in Latino areas, according to a 2020 study by WBEZ and City Bureau.
Black Models Cut From Fashion Show After Editors Protest Racial Integration
On July 14, 1959, a New York committee organizing a fashion show for the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Russia, announced it would be removing three scenes that featured Black and white models together after dozens of fashion editors protested the representation of racial integration.
How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century
An 11th-grade student leaned back in his chair at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, and said, “Absurd. That is the only way to describe those numbers. They are absurd.” He and his classmates had just read statistics about the racial wealth gap in their Political Economy class: White households are worth at least 10 times as much as Black households; only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth while a third of Blacks do; Black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. These numbers are absurd, and they are not accidental.
What Was Black America’s Double War?
We read about Robert Smalls, the slave who sailed himself to freedom and then became the first black Navy captain during the American Civil War, five years before the first Memorial Day. Black leaders felt that African Americans could make the strongest case for freedom and citizenship if they demonstrated their heroism and commitment to the country on the battlefield, as they had done since 5,000 black men fought for the Patriot cause in the American Revolution. No one put this more forcefully than Frederick Douglass did in the middle of the Civil War: “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States.”
