Segregation And Desegregation Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Though people are naturally inclined to live near others with similar characteristics, for a power or authority to mandate that condition as a tool of discrimination amounts to segregation. Segregation results from ignorance, intolerance, and inaction from those who could change the situation. Though many countries separate segments of their population by specific traits, this entry is concerned with how segregation of races occurred in the United States and why that condition changed over time.

After The Civil War: Reconstruction’s Promise Unfulfilled

Following the Civil War (1861–1865), Congress led by a Republican majority passed a plethora of legislation intended to help the transition to freedom for blacks. The Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, was successfully proposed by Congress and ratified in 1865 by the states in a single year. That same year, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created to furnish food, fuel, and clothing to those who suffered previous servitude. In 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which conferred citizenship on blacks. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress in 1866 to ensure citizenship to those of color; it took two years for the states to ratify that amendment. Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which set the terms for the readmittance of Southern states to the Union. One of the latter terms was the requirement of “Negro suffrage” in revised state constitutions, a right successfully gained through ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. In the last major national legislation addressing minority rights during Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 mandated equal access to public accommodations among people of all races.

However, the aforementioned progress in civil rights was mitigated by racist policies within states. For example, a series of “black codes” were enacted that forbade blacks to own property or to give testimony in court in certain instances. Among the most severe of the discriminatory policies against blacks were laws permitting imprisonment for lack of employment. Various methods of preventing black voting rights were employed, including grandfather clauses, poll taxes, literacy tests, white-only primaries, and at-large elections. As if these were not enough, hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan formed to intimidate and frighten minorities. Ultimately, racism turned into murder in stark numbers, with an average of more than 180 blacks lynched annually during the 1890s alone.

Plessy Ruling And Institutionalized Segregation

Supreme Court rulings dealing with civil rights that were handed down in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were not supportive of progressive civil rights for minorities. In fact, they had the impact of legalizing separation between whites and blacks in the United States. In its 1878 ruling in Hall v. DeCuir, a unanimous court struck down Louisiana’s law banning racial discrimination by common carriers. Four years later, the court struck down federal laws seeking to punish crimes like murder and assault. The 1883 decision, referred to as Civil Rights Cases, actually declared the 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. In that ruling, the court held that Congress may legislate on civil rights only if a state passes a discriminatory law and that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause is silent on racial discrimination by private citizens.

By 1890, most southern states had developed segregated facilities. In that year, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required separate cars on railroads for blacks and whites. Through a coordinated series of actions, a group of New Orleans citizens challenged the law. After failing at the state court level, they appealed to the Supreme Court. In a seven to one decision, the court upheld the constitutionality of the Louisiana law, basing its ruling on the concept of “separate but equal. ”The result was institutionalized segregation in most areas of American life for the next half-century. Perhaps one area where this pattern was most apparent is with minority representation in Congress. From 1865 to 1900, twenty-two blacks were elected to Congress. However, that number dwindled to zero in 1900 to 1929 and totaled only seven from 1900 through 1966.

Destroying The “Separate But Equal” Myth

Segregation occurred in all areas of American life during the first half of the twentieth century. One area where separate facilities were not equal between the races was in education. Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began a coordinated campaign in the 1930s to discredit the “separate but equal” doctrine. In two cases three years apart, the NAACP succeeded in getting the University of Maryland (1935) and the University of Missouri (1938) to admit blacks to their law schools. In a 1947 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Virginia’s separate accommodations for blacks and whites on interstate buses were unconstitutional.

As the legal attack against “separate but equal” continued, American society began to recognize the insidiousness of segregation. In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play major league baseball. In 1948, President Harry Truman signed an executive order that ended segregation in the U.S. military.

As the 1950s began, a series of court rulings finally broke the back of segregation. Two U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 1950 forced the University of Texas Law School and the University of Oklahoma’s doctoral program in education to admit African American students for the first time. After exhausting state appeals, supporters of equal education in Kansas, Delaware, Virginia, and South Carolina filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court combined the appeals and titled the case Brown v. Board of Education.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the “separate but equal” doctrine as applied to education was unconstitutional, thus explicitly overturning the Plessy v. Ferguson precedent. A year later, in a case titled Brown v. Board of Education II, the court unanimously directed school desegregation to proceed with “all deliberate speed.” Court-ordered busing, use of National Guard troops, and federal lawsuits were among the tools used to ensure integration orders.

The unanimous rulings in Brown v. Board of Education had many positive results. First, they hastened desegregation of education and subsequently of many other areas. In a series of per curium decisions between 1955 and 1958, the Supreme Court invalidated segregation at state parks, beaches, bathhouses, golf courses, and public transportation. Second, the Brown rulings gave impetus to the civil rights movement and to mass action by advocates of equality, as the Montgomery bus boycott was initiated the same year that Brown II was decided. Third, the Brown rulings stimulated landmark federal legislation, which culminated with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Bibliography:

Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Before Brown/Beyond Boundaries: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World, 2004.
Bender, Leslie, and Daan Braveman. Power, Privilege, and Law: A Civil Rights Reader. St. Paul, Minn.:West, 1995.
Samuels, Albert L. Is Separate Unequal? Black Colleges and the Challenge of Desegregation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.
Stooksbury, Kara E. “Segregation in Public Education.” In Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties, vol. 3, edited by Otis Stephens, John Scheb, and Kara Stooksbury.Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2006.
Woodward, C.Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow: A Commemorative Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

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