Segregation

Racial segregation is characterized by separation of different racial groups in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home.  Legal segregation in both South Africa and the U.S. was required and came with "anti-miscegenation laws" (prohibitions against interracial marriage) and laws against hiring people of the race that is the object of discrimination in any but unskilled positions.

Segregation in hiring practices contributes to economic imbalance between the races. Segregation, however, often allowed close contact in hierarchical situations, such as allowing a person of one race to work as a servant for a member of another race. Segregation can involve spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, such as schools and hospitals by people of different races.

After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in America, racial discrimination became regulated by the so-called Jim Crow laws, which mandated strict segregation of the races. Though such laws were instituted shortly after fighting ended in many cases, they only became formalized after the end of Republican-enforced Reconstruction in the 1870s and 80s during a period known as the nadir of American race relations. This legalized segregation lasted up to the 1960s, primarily through the deep and extensive power of Southern Democrats.

 By 1968 all forms of segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and by 1970 support for formal legal segregation had dissolved. Formal racial discrimination was illegal in school systems, businesses, the American military, other civil services and the government. Separate bathrooms, water fountains and schools all disappeared and the civil rights movement had the public's support.

Since then, African-Americans have played a significant role as mayors, governors, and state officials in both Southern and Northern states and on the national level have been on the Supreme Court, in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in presidential cabinets, and as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

By Ross loveitt   

Bibliography   

www.alt.tnt.tv/movies/tntoriginals/wallace/seg.home.html        

www.enceladus.isr.umich.edu/race/racestart.asp

www.law.fsu.edu/Journals/landuse/Vol141/seit.htm

FirstFreedom@usdoj.gov