The term de jure segregation refers to the separation, imposed by law, of individuals, typically based on a characteristic over which the individual has little or no control. The application of such laws can include employment, education, housing, and public accommodation. Implicit in the notion of de jure segregation are the following assumptions: that the characteristic in question separates people into members of superior and inferior groups; that inferior group members are entitled to few, if any, benefits; and that integration is detrimental to superior group members. Examples of de jure segregation include Hitler’s ghetto and concentration camp policies, South Africa’s apartheid system, and, in the United States, Japanese internment, the American Indian reservation system, and Jim Crow.
Among the most legally contested was Jim Crow. Shortly after the Civil War ended, the federal government granted former slaves and their descendants numerous rights and enforced them through military occupation of southern land. After the withdrawal of federal troops in 1877, southern states and local governments passed laws to undermine federal racial equality laws. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ability of states to take such action in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The ruling affirmed a Louisiana law that required railroad passengers to be racially segregated since the segregation was deemed equal and occurred within state lines.
U.S. Supreme Court rulings issued in the aftermath of the separate but equal doctrine established in Plessy reveal variety in the laws that constituted Jim Crow. Some were located in provisions of state constitutions mandating racially segregated public schools, including one in Mississippi discussed in Gong Lum v. Rice and another in Georgia referenced in Cumming v. Board of Education. Others were found in legislative action such as the decision by state officials to reconfigure Tuskegee, Alabama, to exclude nearly all its black residents, challenged in Gomillion v. Lightfoot. Comprising a third type were city ordinances like the one disputed in Buchanan v. Warley that barred anyone who was not of the same race as the majority of people living on a city block from living in a house on that block. Palmer v. Thomson and Watson v. City of Memphis also involved city-mandated racial segregation. The former concerned parks in Jackson, Mississippi, and the latter parks and facilities in Memphis, Tennessee.
The first strike against de jure segregation in the United States occurred in 1954 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, brought to the court by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The ruling was a major victory for the NAACP and other members of the civil rights movement. Among their attorneys was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first person of color to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The prohibition of de jure segregation in the United States, begun with the Brown case, occurred after passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968.
Bibliography:
- Klarman, Michael J. 2004. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Oxford University Press.
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