Segregation in the US
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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.
America’s history of racial inequality continues to haunt us.
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 ACLU
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.”
Nov. 5, 1917: Supreme Court Rules Against Segregated Housing
On November 5, 1917, in the case of Buchanan v. Warley, the Supreme Court declared segregated housing to be unconstitutional. In an unanimous decision, the Court determined that a Louisville, Kentucky city ordinance limiting Black people from living in majority-white areas was in violation of the 14th Amendment and an infringement on individual property rights. Looking back years later, W. E. B. Du Bois declared the decision to have broken “the backbone of segregation.”
HOW SEGREGATION SURVIVED
By the dawn of the 1970s, the Civil Rights Movement had helped push the Supreme Court to declare segregation in public schools unconstitutional and led to the passage of significant laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations and employment; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited discriminatory voting practices; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which barred discrimination in housing sales, rentals, and financing.
10 'Must-Watch' Black History Documentaries
Did Slavery really end with the Civil War? The documentary Slavery by Another Name explores how in the years following the Emancipation Proclamation, systematic approaches were taken to re-enslave newly freed Blacks in the United States. This system included new brutal methods of forced labor in which men were arrested and forced to work without pay, bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters.
The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans
In 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered a speech best known as“Ain’t I A Woman?” to a crowded audience at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. At the time, slavery remained in full force, a vibrant enterprise that fueled the American economy. Various laws protected that system, including the Fugitive Slave Act, which resulted in the abduction of “free” Black children, women, and men as well as those who had miraculously escaped to northern cities like Boston or Philadelphia. Bounty hunters then sold their prey to Southern plantation owners. The law denied basic protections for Black people caught in the greed-filled grasps of slavery.
Brown v. Board of Education
Linda Carol Brown—who is seven-years-old and lives in Topeka, Kansas—has to walk across railroad tracks and take an old bus to get to school, even though there is a better school five blocks from her house. Linda can't go to that school because she is black, and the schools in Topeka are segregated. In 1951, Linda's father, the Reverend Oliver Brown, goes to court to try to do something about it.
Living with Segregation
He went across the hall and went to Dr. Blalock's office and said, I would like my pay. The way you talked to me this morning, I can't take that. I wasn't raised that way. And I want my pay. — Nat Crippens, North Nashville community historian, describing Vivien Thomas's reaction after an angry Dr. Blalock swore at him.
How Housing Segregation Shaped America's 'Gayborhoods'
by Gillian Branstetter 6/6/23 ACLU
For much of the last century, the “American dream” has centered on homeownership by married, white families. Alongside explicitly racist policies like racial segregation enforced by redlining, banks and realtors routinely rejected applications for mortgage loans and housing from single or divorced adults of any race, prizing the married heterosexual white man as the most “deserving” debtor and homeowner. The further away from this ideal someone happened to live — by virtue of their race, gender, marital status, or sexuality — the less likely they were to find housing outside of the country’s growing and strictly segregated urban centers.
March 10, 1903: African American Leaders Protest Streetcar Segregation
The Streetcar Segregation Act, adopted by the Arkansas legislature in 1903, had assigned African-American and white passengers to “separate but equal” sections of streetcars.
Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital
Chocolate City tells the tumultuous, four-century story of race and democracy in our nation’s capital. Emblematic of the ongoing tensions between the U.S.’s expansive democratic promises and its enduring racial realities, Washington often has served as a national battleground for contentious issues, including slavery, segregation, civil rights, the drug war, and gentrification.
Convict Leasing
After the Civil War, slavery persisted in the form of convict leasing, a system in which Southern states leased prisoners to private railways, mines, and large plantations. While states profited, prisoners earned no pay and faced inhumane, dangerous, and often deadly work conditions. Thousands of Black people were forced into what authors have termed “slavery by another name” until the 1930s.
In the 1930s, Mexican families helped dismantle segregation in the California school system. Education advocates now want to create greater awareness of that effort.
Over time, some cases have come to be more widely referenced than others, but all have contributed to greater civil rights protections in schools. Consider this lesser-known case that took place on Olive Street in San Diego County between 1930 and 1931, when a group of parents of Mexican heritage successfully sued the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District for trying to build and place their children in a separate “Americanization” school.
Milestones Of The Civil Rights Movement
After African Americans boycotted the Montgomery, Alabama bus system for over a year, the local bus company had agreed to desegregate its buses because it had lost so much revenue. The city and state, however, insisted that bus drivers continue to enforce Jim Crow laws. A Federal District Court then ruled that segregation on the buses was illegal. The Supreme Court affirmed that decision, Browder v. Gayle, in November 1956, handing NAACP lawyers a major victory.
Who Segregated America?
by Colin Gordon 29/6/22 DISSENT
Recent scholarship and reporting on racial disparities in the United States have emphasized the role of public policy—especially federal policy—in the creation of what the 1968 Kerner Commission famously dubbed “two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” This is especially true of housing policy. Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White (2005) skewers the stark exclusion of African-American veterans from the benefits of the GI Bill. Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law (2017) offers a damning synthesis on how the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) embraced Jim Crow.
Segregation 2.0: America's School-to-Prison Pipeline
In an iconic image painted after the Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, Norman Rockwell depicted a solitary black girl, dressed in a crisp white dress, walking to class on what is obviously her first day at a newly desegregated school. What sears the image in our memory are her surroundings: four federal marshals, assigned to protect her as she makes her way through a hostile crowd.
Poverty, segregation persist in U.S. schools, report says
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/poverty-segregation-persist-in-u-s-schools-report-says by Maria Danilova 11/1/18 PBS NEWS]
WASHINGTON — Too often, low-income, black and Latino students end up in schools with crumbling walls, old textbooks and unqualified teachers, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Full History
In 1950, the rules of racial segregation governed the most minute details of social life in much of the United States — and the rules of segregation defied all logic. Linda Brown, a seven-year-old third grader in Topeka, Kansas, had to walk six blocks to catch the black school bus, when there was a school — a white school — seven blocks from her home.
LYNCHING IN AMERICA: CONFRONTING THE LEGACY OF RACIAL TERROR
Lynching profoundly impacted race relations in this country and shaped the geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African Americans in ways that are still evident today. Terror lynchings fueled the mass migration of millions of Black people from the South into urban ghettos in the North and West throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Lynching created a fearful environment where racial subordination and segregation was maintained with limited resistance for decades. Most critically, lynching reinforced a legacy of racial inequality that has never been adequately addressed in America.
Racism by Design: The Building of Interstate 81
by Jay A. Fernandez 10/8/23 ACLU
David Rufus was just a toddler when the bulldozers rolled into the streets of his Syracuse, New York, neighborhood in 1960. As part of the country’s interstate highways surge, city officials wanted to extend I-81 with an elevated viaduct that would cut right through the 15th Ward, where nearly 90 percent of Syracuse’s Black population lived. Protesting locals were ignored, and the razing of homes, churches, and businesses resulted in the displacement of more than 1,300 families, including Rufus’s. Over the next 50 years, the 15th Ward community suffered in every way possible—jobs, housing, schools, and public health plunged while crime, pollution, and poverty spiked.
Remembering Black Veterans Targeted for Racial Violence in the U.S.
Inspired to defend their country and pursue greater opportunity, African Americans have served in the U.S. military for generations. But for over a century, instead of being treated as honored members of society upon their return from military service, Black veterans were accosted, attacked, or lynched. EJI has documented at least 35 military veterans who were victims of racial terror lynching from 1865 to 1950.
July 11, 1951: Cicero Riot Over Housing Desegregation
by Isabel Wilkerson ZINN EDUCATION PROJECT
On the evening of July 11, 1951, one of the biggest riots in U.S. history began after a young Black couple moved into an apartment in all-white Cicero, Illinois, west of Chicago. The husband, Harvey Clark Jr., was a World War II veteran who migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and was working as a bus driver.
Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through cities in the United States, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.
April 11, 1968: Fair Housing Act Signed Into Law
This Act was the result of years of grassroots organizing and protest across the United States. People demanded just treatment by landlords and equal access to housing in all parts of the country, not just in the “Jim Crow” segregated South.
Scholar says Trump’s efforts to reframe U.S. history is ‘reminiscent of McCarthyism’
by Amna Nawaz 20/8/25 PBS NEWS
President Trump described Smithsonian museums as “out of control” for emphasizing, in his view, “how bad slavery was.” It's part of a pattern by Trump in his second term to reframe historical narratives, in particular about racism and discrimination. Amna Nawaz spoke with historian Peniel Joseph for our series, Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy and our CANVAS coverage.
A Brief History of Race Relations in Kansas
I received my Ph.D. and Masters from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American
Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and my additional Masters in African American World Studies from the University of Iowa. I have previously served as the first Cassius Marcellus Clay Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of History at Yale University.
Black Children Begin Movement Protesting Segregation; Face Police Brutality
On May 2, 1963, more than 1,000 Black children peacefully protested racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, as part of the Children's Crusade, beginning a movement that sparked widely publicized police brutality that shocked the nation and spurred major civil rights advances.
New Study Shows Impact of Lynching History on Life Expectancy Today
A new study from researchers at the University of South Florida found that counties in the South with the highest number of racial terror lynchings have the lowest life expectancy. Conversely, counties with no recorded history of lynchings have the highest life expectancy rate.
Those Who Don't Learn from History are Destined to Repeat It
by Kenneth W. Chandler 28/6/11 ACLU
June 25 marked the 70th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's, Executive Order 8802, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion and national origin in federal defense contracts. It is important to understand both the historical implications of this executive order and how it was reversed by President George W. Bush's "Faith-Based" executive order more than 60 years later.
The Truth About Confederate-Named Schools
Every day in the U.S., thousands of children across the country attend schools named in honor of Confederate leaders who fought to preserve slavery and racial hierarchy in America. Simply by going to school, young people are taught to embrace the names, likenesses, and symbols of men who fought a brutal war against the U.S. in order to preserve white supremacy.
American port cities from New England to New Orleans were shaped by the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Between 1501 and 1867, nearly 13 million African people were kidnapped, forced onto European and American ships, and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved, abused, and forever separated from their homes, families, and cultures.
A history of residential segregation in the US
by Les Picker 18/5/15 WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
In The National Rise in Residential Segregation (NBER Working Paper No.20934), Trevon Logan and John Parmanintroduce a first-of-its-kind measure of residential segregation based upon the racial similarity of next-door neighbors. Using the complete manuscript pages of the federal census to identify the races of next-door neighbors for the period 1880-1940, the authors were able to analyze segregation consistently and comprehensively for all areas in the United States, allowing for an in-depth view of the variation in segregation across time and space.
What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot.
by Kevin M. Kruse 14/8/19 The New York Times Magazine
Atlanta has some of the worst traffic in the United States. Drivers there average two hours each week mired in gridlock, hung up at countless spots, from the constantly clogged Georgia 400 to a complicated cluster of overpasses at Tom Moreland Interchange, better known as “Spaghetti Junction.” The Downtown Connector — a 12-to-14-lane megahighway that in theory connects the city’s north to its south — regularly has three-mile-long traffic jams that last four hours or more.
Still Separate, Still Unequal: Teaching about School Segregation and Educational Inequality
by Keith Meatto 2/5/19 The New York Times
Racial segregation in public education has been illegal for 65 years in the United States. Yet American public schools remain largely separate and unequal — with profound consequences for students, especially students of color.
The Best MuckReads on America’s Troubled History With Race
by Adam Harris 24/2/16 PROPUBLICA
There have been several events throughout American history that have, for some, signaled the beginning of a post-racial society. The election of Barack Obama to the office of President of the United States is the latest milestone. But the reality is, many believe that racism is still a big problem in the U.S.
Racial History of American Swimming Pools
So there was a study released last week that caught my eye. According to USA Swimming, over 58 percent of African-American children can't swim. That's almost double the rate of white children. And African-American children drown at nearly three times the overall rate. That got us here at the BPP asking questions about, well, race and swimming. And it turns out there's a lot to say about the topic.
A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America.
by The New York Times Magazine
Elmore Bolling, whose brothers called him Buddy, was a kind of one-man economy in Lowndesboro, Ala. He leased a plantation, where he had a general store with a gas station out front and a catering business; he grew cotton, corn and sugar cane. He also owned a small fleet of trucks that ran livestock and made deliveries between Lowndesboro and Montgomery. At his peak, Bolling employed as many as 40 people, all of them black like him.
The black immigrant who challenged US segregation - nearly 190 years ago
by Mariana Schreiber 21/7/21 BBC
During the crossing, Harriett, who wasn't feeling well, tried to seek shelter with her daughter in an area of the ship exclusively for women, but their path was blocked. The reason? They were black, and only white women were allowed in the ladies' cabin, comfortable accommodation with private berths.
Blood And Betrayal In The Southwest
Latino USA looks into the long and little-told history of segregation, discrimination, and state-sanctioned violence towards Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the Southwest.
=====https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-rope-the-forgotten-history-of- segregated-rock-roll-concerts-126235/===== by Steve Knopper 22/2/21 RollingStone
One night in the late 1950s, the Flamingos’ bus pulled up to a concert hall in Birmingham, Alabama, and a row of 30 to 50 police officers holding rifles and billy clubs was waiting for them. The cops escorted the six-member doo-wop group, famous for “I Only Have Eyes for You” and “The Ladder of Love,” to its dressing room and gave strict instructions.
From segregation to Selma: View iconic photos from the Civil Rights movement
“So much of our turbulent history – the stain of slavery and anguish of civil war, the yoke of segregation and tyranny of Jim Crow, the death of four little girls in Birmingham, and the dream of a Baptist preacher – met on this bridge,” he said. “It was not a clash of armies, but a clash of wills; a contest to determine the meaning of America.”
Preserving history of Mexican American school segregation
by Russell Contreras 9/12/21 AXIOS
Activists in the small town of Marfa, Texas, are working to get national recognition for a building once used as a segregated school for Mexican American students, some of who were used as extras in the 1956 movie, "Giant."
African Americans in Las Vegas
From the 1950s to the early 1960s, in the midst of the economic boom that was occurring in America, Las Vegas experienced spectacular growth. Tourists supplied the city with some $200 million in profits every year. The number of resorts on the Strip was increasing rapidly, and the city proclaimed itself the "Entertainment Capital" of the country. However, outside of the neon glow of downtown Las Vegas, across the Fremont Street railroad tracks, lay the reality of racial segregation.
Profiles in perseverance
Every Black History Month, we tend to celebrate the same cast of historic figures. They are the civil rights leaders and abolitionists whose faces we see plastered on calendars and postage stamps. They resurface each February when the nation commemorates African Americans who have transformed America.
Exploring the AMA’s History of Discrimination
by Jonathan Sidhu 16/7/08 PROPUBLICA
Last Thursday, the American Medical Association apologized for its history of discrimination against African-American physicians. The apology comes on the heels of a JAMA paper published ($) by a panel of independent experts, which among other things detailed how the AMA worked to close down African-American medical schools.
I’m a black man who moved to the Deep South. Here’s what it’s teaching me about race.
The South represents slavery and bigotry. Living here has emboldened me like nowhere else I’ve been before.
Report: School Segregation Is Back, 60 Years After “Brown”
by Sarah Childress 15/5/14 FRONTLINE
The report found that re-segregation has happened gradually, amid court rulings allowing states to set aside integration orders, and a growing Latino population, which has experienced the most dramatic increase in segregation.
Barack Obama legacy: Did he improve US race relations?
When in the 1950s, a former TV executive by the name of E Frederic Morrow became the first black White House aide not to have a job description that included turning down beds, polishing shoes or serving drinks with a deferential bow, he was prohibited from ever being alone in the same room as a white woman.
The white Southerners who fought US segregation
The black neighbourhood of Greenville in segregated 1960s Mississippi had never seen anything like it. Neither had Mr Gorton when he encountered white people praying alongside their black brethren during an impromptu street-side Pentecostal revival.
Claudette Colvin: The 15-year-old who came before Rosa Parks
by Taylor-Dior Rumble 10/3/18 BBC
In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did exactly the same thing. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC.
Case in Point
America has a long history of social upheaval and cultural mood swings. These shifts leave clear signs of their passing. The trick is knowing how to read the signs, and interpret their meaning.
Wernher von Braun’s Record on Civil Rights
by Steven Moss and Richard Paul PBS Shows
In June 1965, Alabama governor George C. Wallace scheduled a tour of NASA’s Huntsville, Alabama test site, the Marshall Space Flight Center. The visit was part of a road trip he organized for small town newspaper editors, designed to show them “the real Alabama.” Wallace had come into office promising "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" and backed up that promise by standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama to personally block African-American students from enrolling.
Next time someone questions America’s history of racism, show them this video
America has a long history of systemic racism: From the dehumanization of black people to justify slavery to the policies of segregation and mass incarceration that followed emancipation, the country has always made it difficult for many minorities to rise out of their literal and figurative shackles.
This is how systemic racism is hampering progress around the world
by WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM 16/9/20
George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Three Black Americans killed in acts that reminded the world that systemic racism is still very real in the United States. The early summer protests that followed, though sparked by those deaths, were manifestations of deeper anger and despair at the racism that has plagued the country since its founding.
What is critical race theory?
by WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM 20/8/25
Black History Month 2022 is being marked as American society grapples with the significance of Black history, with discussions around the relevance and necessity of critical race theory taking centre stage. This reckoning with racism was brought to the forefront of American consciousness in the aftermath of George Floyd's death at the hands of police officers in May 2020.
'Segregated Skies' tells the story of the first Black pilot for a commercial airline
by Elizabeth Blair 18/2/22 npr
When American Airlines hired David Harris in 1964, he became the first African American pilot for a commercial airline. The story of how he broke the color barrier in the clouds is the subject of the young adult book Segregated Skies by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cottman.
Green Book builds a feel-good comedy atop an artifact of shameful segregation. Yikes.
by Alissa Wilkinson 6/1/19 Vox
The movie is named after guides published for black travelers in segregated America. But its spin is all Hollywood.
Know your history: Understanding racism in the US
by A'Lelia Bundles 15/8.15 ALJAZEERA
We cannot truly fathom how a minor traffic stop in Cincinnati could result in a white campus police officer blowing out the brains of an unarmed black man unless we delve into the role race has played in law enforcement from the enactment of the federal Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 to today’s mandatory minimum sentencing statutes.
'Segregation Forever': A Fiery Pledge Forgiven, But Not Forgotten
It was just a single line in a speech given 50 years ago today. But that one phrase, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever," is remembered as one of the most vehement rallying cries against racial equality in American history.
The segregation-era travel guide that saved black Americans from having to sleep in their cars
Black cemeteries are reflection of deep segregation history
As a child, Linda Davis and her mother broke clay pots over the gravesites of their ancestors, allowing the flowers in them to take root.
When she returned to Brooklyn Cemetery in Athens Georgia decades later in 2009, her grandparents' temporary grave markers were lost, and shrubs and overgrowth blanketed the site. But it still felt like home to Davis, and she knew then it was up to her to restore the cemetery.
Federal courthouse renamed after Latino family in segregation fight
by Russell Contreras 6/1/25 AXIOS
President Biden has signed a bill that renames the U.S. Courthouse in Los Angeles after the Latino parents who helped end legal school segregation in California and set up the 1954 landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.
An American Nightmare
It was exactly a century ago this year that Sam Hose left his home in rural Georgia for Atlanta. A literate and hard-working black man needing money to help care for his ill mother and his mentally retarded brother, Hose ended up laboring for a white landlord on a plantation outside the city. In the spring of the next year, the two had a falling out over wages. The white man threatened the black man with a pistol and the black man defended himself with the ax he was using to chop wood. Hose accidentally killed his employer and fled to his mother's cabin.
I Went in Search of Abandoned African-American Cemeteries
by Jerrel Floyd 29/6/18 PROPUBLICA
To get to St. George Cemetery, especially its oldest section, you have to make your way past branches and thorns, across the weathered hills and over downed trees. Eventually, dozens of scattered headstones, some of them knocked over, come into view. And there, sitting upright, is the gravestone of William Chapman, an African-American veteran of the Civil War who died March 21, 1904.
Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law
by Nikole Hannah-Jones 25/6/15 PROPUBLICA
On Wednesday, the administration announced an effort it said would put some muscle behind the slogan, saying it would enforce a new set of rules involving federally subsidized housing that require cities and counties to actively document and combat segregation in their communities.
It’s been 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education. The US is still trying to achieve the promise of integration.
by Chandelis Duster, Nicquel Terry Ellis and Alex Leeds Matthews 17/5/24 CNN
As the nation commemorates the ruling’s 70th anniversary, civil rights leaders and advocates tell CNN the case may have paved the way for more equal and integrated schools, but fierce – and continued – opposition to integration means the ruling in no way assured the end of segregated education in the United States.
“Get out, little punks”: recent racist incidents at swimming pools have a long history
How swimming pools became a flashpoint of racial tension in America.
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.
Segregation in the United States
Segregation is the practice of requiring separate housing, education and other services for people of color. Segregation was made law several times in 19th- and 20th-century America as some believed that Black and white people were incapable of coexisting.
A Century of Racial Segregation
After the abolition of slavery in the United States, three Constitutional amendments were passed to grant newly freed African Americans legal status: the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Fourteenth provided citizenship, and the Fifteenth guaranteed the right to vote. In spite of these amendments and civil rights acts to enforce the amendments, between 1873 and 1883 the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that virtually nullified the work of Congress during Reconstruction.
Segregation in American history
by Smallwood, James 2024 EBSCO
Segregation in American history refers to the systemic separation of people based on race, primarily impacting African Americans and other people of color, and was a significant barrier to achieving the ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality in the United States.
The history of segregation in the USA
Segregation in America
Segregation in America documents how millions of white Americans joined a mass movement of committed, unwavering, and often violent opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. EJI believes that understanding this mass opposition to racial equality, integration, and civil rights is central to confronting the continuing challenges of racial inequality today.
A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States: Reconstruction and Jim Crow Eras
This guide focuses on the civil rights that various groups have fought for within the United States.
racial segregation
racial segregation, the practice of restricting people to certain circumscribed areas of residence or to separate institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, restaurants, restrooms) on the basis of race or alleged race. Racial segregation provides a means of maintaining the economic advantages and superior social status of the politically dominant group, and in recent times it has been employed primarily by white populations to maintain their ascendancy over other groups by means of legal and social colour bars. Historically, however, various conquerors—among them Asian Mongols, African Bantus, and American Aztecs—practiced discrimination involving the segregation of subject races.
The Struggle Against Segregated Education
The road to desegregated education in the United States was a long and difficult one, and stands as a testament to the remarkable power, tenacity, and moral clarity of great African American trailblazers who refused to settle for the inherent injustice of “separate but equal.”
Jim Crow Laws and Racial Segregation
Immediately following the Civil War and adoption of the 13th Amendment, most states of the former Confederacy adopted Black Codes, laws modeled on former slave laws. These laws were intended to limit the new freedom of emancipated African Americans by restricting their movement and by forcing them into a labor economy based on low wages and debt. Vagrancy laws allowed blacks to be arrested for minor infractions. A system of penal labor known as convict leasing was established at this time. Black men convicted for vagrancy would be used as unpaid laborers, and thus effectively re-enslaved.
The Era of Segregation 1877–1968
When Reconstruction ended in 1877, 90% of African Americans lived in the South. As white southerners regained political control in state and local governments, they passed new laws restricting African Americans. The new laws segregated Black and white people and condemned African Americans to an inferior and second-class citizenship. In response, African Americans created institutions that sustained their communities.
A history of Segregation In The United States
While civil rights efforts have worked to abolish segregation in
education and in public spaces from buses to lunch counters to swimming pools, some 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement residential segregation remains in virtually every metropolitan area in the United States.
A History of Private Schools and Race
by SOUTHERN EDUCATION FOUNDATION
Private schools may have a long, honorable tradition in America that goes back to colonial times, but that tradition ended—at least in the American South—in the last half of the 20th century when they were used as safe havens for Southern Whites to escape the effects of the impending and ongoing desegregation mandates.
Segregation Definition, History & Examples
What is segregation? Learn the the meaning and definitions of segregation as well as segregation facts. See segregation examples and a timeline.
A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America
In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America's housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a "state-sponsored system of segregation."
segregation
Racial segregation was a system derived from the efforts of white Americans to keep African Americans in a subordinate status by denying them equal access to public facilities and ensuring that blacks lived apart from whites. During the era of slavery, most African Americans resided in the South, mainly in rural areas.
What was Jim Crow
Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life.
School Segregation in the United States: A Timeline Through History
by Jameelah Nasheed 21/2/23 teenVOGUE
So much of who we are and who we can become starts in the classroom. Education can be a life-changing part of our story, impacting our career path, salary, and even the lives of the generations that follow.
Chicago’s 250 Year History of Segregation
by Zachary Leiter 30/8/23 THE CHICAGO REPORTER
That last fact is key, because in the United States, where you live determines your school choices, your social services, your job opportunities, and your safety. It determines how heavily you’re policed, how easy it is to access fresh food, and how much government investment your community receives. It determines whether you breathe clean air and have access to clean water.
The Racial Segregation of American Cities Was Anything but Accidental
by Katie Nodjimbadem 30/5/17 Smithsonian
It’s not surprising to anyone who has lived in or visited a major American metropolitan region that the nation’s cities tend to be organized in their own particular racial pattern. In Chicago, it’s a north/south divide. In Austin, it’s west/east. In some cities, it’s a division based around infrastructure, as with Detroit’s 8 Mile Road. In other cities, nature—such as Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia River—is the barrier. Sometimes these divisions are man-made, sometimes natural, but none are coincidental.
segregation
by Legal Information Institute
Segregation is the action of separating people, historically on the basis of race and/or gender. Segregation implies the physical separation of people in everyday activities, in professional life, and in the exercise of civil rights.
Modern Segregation
by Richard Rothstein 6/3/24 Economic Policy Institute
We cannot substantially improve the performance of the poorest African American students – the “truly disadvantaged,” in William Julius Wilson’s phrase – by school reform alone. It must be addressed primarily by improving the social and economic conditions that bring too many children to school unprepared to take advantage of what schools have to offer.
Segregation in Health Care
Structural racism is deeply embedded in US health care. Legally sanctioned racial segregation in hospitals ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with fiscally incentivized enforcement through Medicare payment structures implemented in 1966. Yet, practices such as sorting patients by insurance status still perpetuate de facto racial and class segregation, especially in academic health centers.
Black history in the United States: Key moments from slavery to George Floyd Published
The 46-year-old died after being arrested, and pinned to the ground, by police officers in the US city of Minneapolis.
The Jim Crow Era | A Stain on America's Past
An African American named Homer Plessy predated Rosa Parks' famous refusal to comply with racist transportation laws by more than 60 years. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction for sitting in a whites-only train car in Plessy v. Ferguson, leading to the Jim Crow era. Discover hard history and how "separate but equal" was far from equal.
Segregation
NARRATOR: In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation was legal. This meant that African Americans could be segregated, or separated, from whites in public places, such as schools. The Supreme Court reversed that decision in 1954. It ruled that separate schools for blacks and whites were unequal and, therefore, against the law.
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation. The origin of the term "Jim Crow" is obscure, but probably refers to slave songs that refer to an African dance called "Jump Jim Crow."
Segregation in Housing and Education
Richard Rothstein, Distinguished Fellow at the Economics Policy Institute, spoke on ways in which the past has determined race-based social inequality today in the United States. He focused his presentation on federal housing policies that have resulted in residential segregation, countering the widely held assertion that these housing patterns are “de facto” because they emerged from individual or market-based activity.
Black History Milestones: Timeline
To satisfy the labor needs of the rapidly growing North American colonies, white European settlers turned in the early 17th century from indentured servants (mostly poorer Europeans) to a cheaper, more plentiful labor source: enslaved Africans. After 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery spread quickly through the American colonies.
The Troubled History of American Education after the Brown Decision
On May 17, 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision that racial segregation in the public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment, it sparked national reactions ranging from elation to rage. As some Americans celebrated this important ruling and its impact on democracy, their early belief in Brown’s power to eliminate racial inequities in the public schools now reflects a hopeful naiveté and the beginning of a decades-long struggle to fulfill its promise.
segregation
by Edward A. Hatfield 1/7/07 New Georgia ENCYCLOPEDIA
Beginning in the 1890s, Georgia and other southern states passed a wide variety of Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation or separation in public facilities and effectively codified the region’s tradition of white supremacy.
The Moment When Four Students Sat Down to Take a Stand
by Christopher Wilson 16/12/21 Smithsonian
Christopher Wilson is Supervisory Curator and Chair of the Division of Home and Community Life at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He studies the Black Freedom Struggle and has created several major program series at the Smithsonian including the award-winning educational theater program History Alive!, the National Youth Summit, and the History Film Forum.
The 1619 Project
The 1619 Project is a long-form journalistic revisionist historiographical work that takes a critical view of traditionally revered figures and events in American history, including the Patriots in the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers, along with Abraham Lincoln and the Union during the Civil War.[1][2][3][4] It was developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine.
Sundown town
Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, were all-White municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practiced a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation or violence. They were most prevalent before the 1950s. The term came into use because of signs that directed "colored people" to leave town by sundown.[1]
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
“Don’t let the sun go down on you in this town.” We equate these words with the Jim Crow South but, in a sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, award-winning and bestselling author James W. Loewen demonstrates that strict racial exclusion was the norm in towns and villages across the United States, from sea to shining sea, for much of the twentieth century.
Sundown Towns
From Maine to California, thousands of communities kept out African Americans (or sometimes Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.) by force, law, or custom. These communities are sometimes called “sundown towns” because some of them posted signs at their city limits reading, typically, “Nigger, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On You In.
sundown town
by Will Gosner 10/10/25 Britannica
sundown town, in U.S. history, a town that excluded nonwhite people—most frequently African Americans—from remaining in town after sunset. More generally, sundown town is used to describe a place where the resident population was through deliberate action made to be overwhelmingly composed of white people.
Sundown Towns
by Ross Coen 24/8/20 BLACKPAST
Sundown Towns are all-white communities, neighborhoods, or counties that exclude Blacks and other minorities through the use of discriminatory laws, harassment, and threats or use of violence. The name derives from the posted and verbal warnings issued to Blacks that although they might be allowed to work or travel in a community during the daytime, they must leave by sundown.
Structural racism through Sundown towns and its relationship to COVID-19 local risk and racial and ethnic diversity
“Sundown towns” across the US prevented racial and ethnic minorities from living and working within their borders as they forced minorities to leave these towns after sunset. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between sundown town status, COVID-19 local risk index and racial and ethnic diversity. A multi-level hierarchical model was used to examine the effect of historical segregation through sundown towns status on present day COVID-19 local risk index and city-level diversity.
Historical Shadows: The Links between Sundown Towns and Contemporary Black–White Inequality
I contribute to our understanding of black–white inequality in the United States by assessing the legacy of
“sundown towns.” Sundown towns are places that restricted who could live there based on ideas about race. The often-violent tactics employed to create and maintain all-white spaces reshaped dramatically the demographic and social landscape of the non-South. I extend previous research on sundown towns by examining their association with contemporary black–white economic inequality. In addition, I advance a new theoretical perspective to explain how the history associated with sundown towns contributes to contemporary inequality, namely large-scale segregation. To assess the contemporary impact of sundown history
Defining Sundown Towns
by Leia Belt, M.A., Ph.D. 29/8/24 Academy Health
The legacy of sundown towns—any organized jurisdictions that employed violence to enforce exclusionary and segregation policies against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)—is not merely a concealed relic of a racist past but a persistent force perpetuating structural inequities that contribute to ongoing health disparities. Because they are often seen as shameful and concealed from American history, sundown towns—most prevalent in the Midwest and the West—are frequently excluded from discussions of places with a legacy of structural violence and segregation. Incorporating measures of sundown town histories into health services research (HSR) will enable research, policy and interventions to identify the enduring upstream root causes of health inequities, even in rural and data restricted areas.
Sundown Towns and Racial Exclusion: The Southern White Diaspora and the "Great Retreat"
by AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
This paper studies the rise of sundown towns—places where Blacks and other minorities were excluded after dark—outside the South after 1890. We provide a new dataset on the timing of sundown town establishment using full count census records. Using a shift-share instrumental variables approach, we show that the presence of Southern Whites is causally related to the appearance of sundown towns, with lynchings and the establishment of KKK chapters as plausible mechanisms for racial exclusion.
A national data set of historical US sundown towns for quantitative analysis
by David Rigby 8/1/25 scientific reports
We present a new national data set of historical sundown towns in the United States linked to contemporary spatial information – i.e., the Historical Sundown Towns Linked to US Census Geographies database. Sundown towns are places that once enacted legal or conventional practices meant to restrict the movement or residency of Black people and other people of color within their borders.
List of sundown towns in the United States
A sundown town is a municipality or neighborhood within the United States that practices or once practiced a form of racial segregation characterized by intimidation, hostility, or violence among White people directed toward non-Whites, especially against African Americans. The term "sundown town" derives from the practice of White towns then erecting signage alerting non-Whites to vacate the area before sundown.
Sundown Towns
Between 1890 and 1968, thousands
of towns across the United States drove out their black populations or took steps to forbid African Americans from living in them. Thus were created “sundown towns,” so named because many marked their city limits with signs typically reading, “Nigger, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On You In
Sundown Towns Are Still A Problem For Black Drivers
by Ade Onibada 22/7/21 BuzzFeedNews
When 30-year-old hiker Marco Williams journeyed from his home in Prince George’s County, Maryland, to visit Devil’s Bathtub in deep Virginia in June of last year, the outdoor enthusiast never imagined that a stop for gas would present him with a warning that potentially saved his life.
Historical Database of Sundown Towns
by James W. Lowewen 2/8/24 Land Trust Alliance
The world’s only registry of sundown towns, entire communities that for decades was all-white on purpose. The site contains images, tips for teaching, and strategies for transcending its past and building good race relations.
AP Road Trip: Racial tensions in America’s ‘sundown towns’
by TIM SULLIVAN and NOREEN NASIR 13/10/20 AP
VIENNA, Ill. (AP) — Ask around this time-battered Midwestern town, with its empty storefronts, dusty antique shops and businesses that have migrated toward the interstate, and nearly everyone will tell you that Black and white residents get along really well.
Sundown towns - Washington State
by Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium / University of Washington
Black people were not allowed to live in many towns and suburbs in Washington state during the era before the National Fair Housing Act (1968) and some towns operated with unofficial sundown rules. African Americans might work in the community but were expected to leave in the evening. Black men would be harrassed after dark, either by law enforcement or by white residents, typically young men in cars. Kennewick was the most notorious sundown town in Washington.
The Importance of Sundown Towns
ANNA IS A TOWN of about 7,000 people, including adjoining Jonesboro.
The twin towns lie about 35 miles north of Cairo, in southern Illinois. In 1909, in the aftermath of a horrific nearby “spectacle lynching,” Anna and Jonesboro expelled their African Americans. Both cities have been all-white ever since.1 Nearly a century later, “Anna” is still considered by its residents and by citizens of nearby towns to mean “Ain’t No Niggers Allowed,” the acronym the convenience store clerk confirmed in 2001.
Sundown Towns: 'Hiding' Racism Right in the Open
At a certain time in American history, if you happened to be of a certain racial heritage — that is to say, not white — it was probably best not to hang around after dark in certain cities and certain places. It was possibly dangerous. Sometimes deadly.
Racial Exclusion in Oregon
When Oregon became a state in 1859, it entered into the Union with Black exclusionary laws, essentially making it a “whites only state.” In 1890, 17 of Oregon’s 32 counties had 0-10 African Americans living in them.
What is a Sundown Town? A Dark History of Exclusion
Few Americans know the term “sundown town,” yet the phenomenon is ubiquitous in our country’s history. So what is a sundown town? It is any municipality that uses intimidation to deliberately exclude non-white people from its borders after sunset.
It’s Time for Sundown Towns to Become a More Visible Part of Illinois History. But How?
by Logan Jaffe 21/2/20 PROPUBLICA
I was in Springfield this week to talk about my reporting in Anna, Illinois, and sundown towns like Anna. My talk was held at the Springfield public library — which, I must point out, is officially named Lincoln Library, The Public Library of Springfield, Illinois. It was hosted by the Sangamon County Historical Society in partnership with the Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum, and, between those two organizations, the room was packed!
by UC Berkeley Law Library Catalog
Loewen (emeritus, sociology, U. of Vermont) exposes the history and persistence of "sundown towns," so-named for the signs often found at their corporate limits warning African Americans and other minorities not to be found in the town after dusk. He historically situates the rise of the sundown town movement in the years following the Civil War; describes the mechanisms of violence, threats, law, and policy that were used to force minorities out of Northern and Western towns into the big cities; and charts the continued existence of such communities.
