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. Segregation was the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from whites, as well as the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority and mainstream communities.^[1] 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.^[2]

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Racial and ethnic segregation
Overview Anti-miscegenation laws Crime of apartheid Allegations Caste Xenophobia Environmental / Institutional racism Ethnic nationalism Forced displacement Housing discrimination Exclusionary zoning Redlining Settler colonialism
Historical examples Australia Canada Pass system Separate schools Indian hospitals Fascist Italy French colonial empire Code Noir Indigénat Greek–Turkish​ population exchange Jewish ghettos​ in Europe Pale of Settlement Partition of India Portugal & Spain Nazi Germany Nuremberg Laws Rhodesia South Africa Bantustans Pass laws United Kingdom United States Black Codes Jim Crow laws Separate but equal
Contemporary examples Anti-Romanyism Italy Romania Slovenia Roma walls Bosnia–Herzegovina Schools Brazil Cyprus Gulf states Saudi Arabia UAE South Asian labourers India Uthapuram Muslims Israel Palestinian enclaves / law Hafrada Barriers Malaysia Mauritania Morocco Myanmar Northern Ireland Sudan United States Academies Housing Schools Residential Xinjiang Yemen
Related Citizenship Statelessness Forced assimilation Gender apartheid Income inequality One-drop rule Slavery
Category Commons
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Part of a series on the
Nadir of American race relations
Violence in the 1906 Atlanta race massacre
Historical background Reconstruction era Voter suppression Disfranchisement Redeemers Compromise of 1877 Jim Crow laws Segregation Anti-miscegenation laws Convict leasing
Practices Common actions Expulsions of African Americans Lynchings Lynching postcards Sundown town Whitecapping Vigilante groups Black Legion Indiana White Caps Ku Klux Klan Red Shirts
Lynchings Andrew Richards Michael Green Nevlin Porter and Johnson Spencer Eliza Woods Amos Miller George Meadows Joe Vermillion Jim Taylor Joe Coe People's Grocery Ephraim Grizzard Alfred Blount Samuel J. Bush Stephen Williams Frazier B. Baker and Julia Baker John Henry James Sam Hose George Ward David Wyatt Marie Thompson Watkinsville Ed Johnson William Burns Walker family Laura and L. D. Nelson King Johnson John Evans Jesse Washington Newberry Six Anthony Crawford Ell Persons Jim McIlherron George Taylor John Hartfield 1920 Duluth James Harvey and Joe Jordan Joe Pullen
Massacres and riots Opelousas massacre Rock Springs massacre Thibodaux massacre Spring Valley Race Riot of 1895 Phoenix election riot Wilmington insurrection of 1898 Pana riot Robert Charles riots Evansville race riot Atlanta Massacre of 1906 Springfield race riot of 1908 Johnson–Jeffries riots 1912 racial conflict in Forsyth County 1917 Chester race riot East St. Louis riots Elaine massacre Red Summer Chicago race riot of 1919 Washington race riot of 1919 Ocoee massacre Tulsa race massacre Perry race riot Rosewood massacre
Reactions Anti-lynching movement Exodusters movement Great Migration Back to Africa movement
Related topics Black genocide Civil rights movement (1865–1896) Civil rights movement (1896–1954) Mass racial violence in the United States
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In the 1857 Dred Scott case (Dred Scott v. Sandford), the U.S. Supreme Court found that Blacks were not and never could be U.S. citizens and that the U.S. Constitution and civil rights were not applicable 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.^[4] 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.^[5][6][7][8]

Segregation was enforced across the U.S. for much of its history. Racial segregation follows two forms. De jure segregation mandated the separation of races by law, and was the form imposed by slave codes before the Civil War and by Black Codes and Jim Crow laws following the war. De jure segregation was outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.^[9] De facto segregation, or segregation "in fact", is that which exists without sanction of the law. De facto segregation continues today in such closely related areas as residential segregation and school segregation because of both contemporary behavior and the historical legacy of de jure segregation.^[10]