Segregation

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the millions of Black Americans who lived between the end of the Civil war and 1965 lived under a system known as Jim Crow. The most visible aspect of the Jim Crow system was segregation, enforced by laws in many southern states and by custom in northern and western states.

Black domestic worker poses with a White child and pony. (Hugh Mangum, 1877-1922)

Segregation is often recalled as the doctrine of “separate but equal.” In reality, segregation embodied and encoded inequality between Black and White people more than it physically separated them. (Across the country rules and practices varied, but Jim Crow also affected Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian people as well.) In many cases, they lived and worked together, sometimes in intimate settings such as Black domestic workers who provided childcare in the homes of White families.

The purpose of Jim Crow was not to physically separate people by race, but rather to create and enforce a distinction in status. It was also a code of conduct that required Black people to show deference to White people at all times, regardless of their age or position. Black people were not afforded the same access to restaurants, schools, hospitals, public transport, restrooms, movie theaters, and even horse shows as White people. For example:

• Black people could not try on clothes in stores.

• A Black person experiencing a medical emergency could not receive care at the nearest hospital if it was reserved for White people.

• A Black person on a sidewalk had to step aside for an approaching White person.

• Black people were not allowed to hold many jobs, severely limiting their economic opportunities.

• Black people were not permitted to attend most colleges and universities.

The Tuskegee University College of Veterinary medicine (TUCVM) in Alabama was established in 1945 because Black people did not have other opportunities to study veterinary medicine due to Jim Crow segregation. TUCVM has educated more than 70% of the nation’s Black veterinarians. (Mark Almond)

In collaboration with local activists, Dr. King was part of numerous campaigns focused on ending these practices of segregation. He first rose to fame as the public face of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, which successfully forced the desegregation of buses in the city. But that was not the end of the story. For years, he and thousands of activists put relentless, strategic pressure on segregation practices. Nearly a decade after the bus boycott, Dr. King stood beside President Lyndon B. Johnson when Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that made Jim Crow segregation illegal.

We will explore Voter Suppression in our next post tomorrow.