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Mar 2, 2024 · WASHINGTON (AP) — Black Americans have endured considerable injustices and barriers to prosperity and equality throughout U.S. history. But their social, economic and political advances in the...
- Black Codes and Jim Crow
- The Supreme Court and Segregation
- Housing Segregation
- Segregation During The Great Migration
- Segregation and The Public Works Administration
- Red-Lining
- Segregation in Schools
- Boston Busing Crisis
- Segregation in The 21st Century
- Sources
The first steps toward official segregation came in the form of “Black Codes.” These were laws passed throughout the South starting around 1865, that dictated most aspects of Black peoples’ lives, including where they could work and live. The codes also ensured Black people’s availability for cheap labor after slavery was abolished. Segregation soo...
In 1875 the outgoing Republican-controlled House and Senate passed a civil rights bill outlawing discrimination in schools, churches and public transportation. But the bill was barely enforced and was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Fergusonthat segregation was constitutional. The ruling establ...
As part of the segregation movement, some cities instituted zoning laws that prohibited Black families from moving into white-dominant blocks. In 1917, as part of Buchanan v. Warley, the Supreme Court found such zoning to be unconstitutional because it interfered with property rights of owners. Using loopholes in that ruling in the 1920s, Secretary...
During the Great Migration, a period between 1916 and 1970, six million African Americans left the South. Huge numbers moved northeast and reported discrimination and segregation similar to what they had experienced in the South. As late as the 1940s, it was still possible to find “Whites Only” signs on businesses in the North. Segregated schools a...
The Public Works Administration’s efforts to build housing for people displaced during the Great Depressionfocused on homes for white families in white communities. Only a small portion of houses was built for Black families, and those were limited to segregated Black communities. In some cities, previously integrated communities were torn down by ...
Starting in the 1930s, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation conspired to create maps with marked areas considered bad risks for mortgages in a practice known as “red-lining.” The areas marked in red as “hazardous” typically outlined Black neighborhoods. This kind of mapping concentrated poverty as (mostly Black) re...
Segregation of children in public schools was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education. The case was originally filed in Topeka, Kansas after seven-year-old Linda Brown was rejected from the all-white schools there. A follow-up opinion handed decision-making to local courts, which allowed some di...
One of the worst incidents of anti-integration happened in 1974. Violencebroke out in Boston when, in order to solve the city’s school segregation problems, courts mandated a busing system that carried Black students from predominantly Roxbury to South Boston schools, and vice versa. The state had passed the Elimination of Racial Balance law in 196...
Segregation persists in the 21st Century. Studies show that while the public overwhelmingly supports integrated schools, only a third of Americans want federal government intervention to enforce it. The term “apartheid schools” describes still-existing, largely segregated schools, where white students make up 0 to 10 percent of the student body. Th...
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, published by Bodley Head. The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic. Dismantling Desegregation by Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eatonby the New Press.
Oct 27, 2009 · The civil rights movement was a struggle for justice and equality for African Americans that took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Among its leaders were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm...
Jun 2, 2020 · Talk to black protesters in the U.S. these days, and police brutality is frequently cast as just one point in a constellation of inequalities. Other key disparities have been well known for a...
Jan 20, 2020 · Legally, African-Americans may live in any community they want – and from Beverly Hills to the Upper East Side, they can and do. But why aren’t those gains deeper and more widespread?
Aug 30, 2022 · In assessing the magnitude of problems that they face, the majority of Black Americans say racism (63%), police brutality (60%) and economic inequality (54%) are extremely or very big problems for Black people living in the U.S. Slightly smaller shares say the same about the affordability of health care (47%), limitations on voting (46%), and ...
Although the majority of black Americans are the descendants of enslaved people brought to the US, one in 10 - close to five million in total - were not born in the US but came here to find a...
