History of Racial Segregation in The United States - Racism and Issues

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 created a policy to segregate the country which involved 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 the 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.

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the segregation of the federal Civil Service. 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 attacked 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.).

See also: Racial discrimination against African-Americans in the U.S. Military

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".

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 US army.

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.

A law need not stipulate de jure segregation to have the effect of de facto segregation. For example, the eagle feather law, which governs the possession and religious use of eagle feathers, was officially written to protect then dwindling eagle populations while still protecting traditional Native American spiritual and religious customs, of which the use of eagles are central. The eagle feather law later met charges of promoting racial segregation because of the law’s provision authorizing the possession of eagle feathers to members of only one ethnic group, Native Americans, and forbidding Native Americans from including non-Native Americans in indigenous customs involving eagle feathers—a common modern practice dating back to the early 16th century.

Sports segregation was also a major national issue as well. In 1900, just four years after the US Supreme Court separate but equal constitutional, segregation was enforced in horse racing, a sport which had previously seen many African American jockeys win Triple Crown races. Widespread segregation would also exist in bicycle and automobile racing. In 1890, however, segregation would end greatly 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 amount of teams to be integrated. In 1933, however, the NFL, now the only major football league in America, 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 where 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 African American Negro League 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.

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 trustee 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 allow 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".