History help! De jure segregation?

1. de jure segregation - segregation that is imposed by law

separatism, segregation - a social system that provides separate facilities for minority groups

United States

Racial segregation in the United States

After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in America, racial discrimination became regulated by the so called Jim Crow laws, which mandated strict segregation of the races. Though such laws were instituted shortly after fighting ended in many cases, they only became formalized after the end of Republican-enforced Reconstruction in the 1870s and 80s during a period known as the nadir of American race relations. This legalized segregation lasted up to the mid 1960s, primarily through the deep and extensive power of Southern Democrats.

While the U.S. Supreme Court majority in 1896 Plessy explicitly upheld only "separate but equal" facilities (specifically, transportation facilities), Justice John Marshall Harlan in his dissent protested that the decision was an expression of white supremacy; he predicted that segregation would "stimulate aggressions … upon the admitted rights of colored citizens," "arouse race hate" and "perpetuate a feeling of distrust between [the] races. Feelings between whites and blacks were so tense, even the jails were segregated."

Institutionalized racial segregation was ended as an official practice by the efforts of such civil rights activists as Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr., Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., working during the period from the end of World War II through the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Many of their efforts were acts of non-violent civil disobedience aimed at disrupting the enforcement of racial segregation rules and laws, such as refusing to give up a seat in the black part of the bus to a white person (Rosa Parks), or holding sit-ins at all-white diners.

By 1968 all forms of segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and by 1970, support for formal legal segregation had dissolved. Formal racial discrimination was illegal in school systems, businesses, the American military, other civil services and the government. Separate bathrooms, water fountains and schools all disappeared and the civil rights movement had the public's support.

Since then, African-Americans have played a significant role as mayors, governors, and state officials in both Southern and Northern states and on the national level have been on the Supreme Court, in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in presidential cabinets, as head of the joint chiefs of staff, and in 2009, the first black President of the United States.

Redlining is the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The most devastating form of redlining, and the most common use of the term, refers to mortgage discrimination. Over the next twenty years, a succession of further court decisions and federal laws, including the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and measure to end mortgage discrimination in 1975, would completely invalidate de jure racial segregation and discrimination in the U.S., although de facto segregation and discrimination have proven more resilient. According to the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, the actual de facto desegregation of U.S. public schools peaked in the late 1980s; since that time, the schools have, in fact, become more segregated mainly due to the ethnic segregation of the nation with whites dominating the suburbs and minorities the urban centers.

The Supreme Court Cases: Dred Scott v. Sandford -- 1857, slaves considered not citizens but property

Plessy v. Ferguson -- 1896, segregation allowed if equal but separate

Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia -- 1946, segregation of races not allowed on motor carriers

Sweatt v. Painter -- 1950, a university cannot exclude a student due to race

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas -- 1954, segregation outlawed in public schools

Green v. County School Board of New Kent County -- 1968, parents cannot choose a previous all-white or all-black school for children