Segregation, 1890–1930
Segregation is the physical separation of individuals, usually based on their race, class,
gender, or religion. Segregation can be either de jure, created by law, or de facto,
meaning resulting from practice. In the early 20th century, both kinds
of segregationcame to define racial relations in the United States. Segregation resulted
in the restriction of the civil, political, economic, and social rights of African Americans,
Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans throughout the nation.
Segregation was a tool used by whites to separate themselves from nonwhites as
Americans redefined race. During the first decades of the 20th century, Americans
adopted the modern definition of race based on skin color, which underlined the belief
that any nonwhite person was inferior. In addition, this gave rise to the belief that
nonwhite Americans posed a threat to the physical and moral health of the nation.
Proponents of segregation argued, therefore, that it was necessary to separate the less
advanced racial groups from the whites.
Native Americans were the first minority group to face segregation. Segregated on
reservations and subject to the rules of the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, they faced
restrictions on their education, occupational choices, and access to proper health care.
Other racial groups experienced increased segregation early in the 20th century.
Segregation of African Americans, many have assumed, was a natural legacy of slavery
and the Civil War. Southern states did not, however, establish the system of laws
requiring segregation known as Jim Crow immediately after the war. African Americans
enjoyed the right to vote and hold political office and used public facilities such as
railroads and theaters alongside whites. Some states and cities had laws segregating
public spaces, but nothing on the scale that came to dominate race relations in the South
after 1890. At the end of the 19th century, the South was reeling from a number of
economic, political, and social crises that led to the passage of segregation laws. The end
of slavery had not ended racial prejudice and violence. The South, with other regions,
experienced its first industrial depression during the 1890s. The Populist Movement had
created political conflict between whites of different economic classes, each of which
sought African-American allies. Many southern whites looked for a remedy for society's
ills. Segregating African Americans became the answer in the eyes of many.
Prior to the end of the 19th century, a number of factors limited the ability of southern
states to completely segregate society on racial lines. By the turn of the century,
however, southern whites were given, in the words of historian C. Vann Woodward,
"permission to hate." Under the influence of conservative jurists, federal courts no
longer broadly interpreted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the
Constitution, which granted equal protection under the law to African Americans and
gave black men the right to vote. Instead, judges repeatedly ruled that the restrictions on
discrimination applied only to the actions of states and not individuals. In 1896,
in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that separate facilities were not
inherently unequal. This decision allowed states, companies, and individuals to
segregate public spaces such as waiting rooms by race, while arguing that the separate
facilities were equal.
Political changes also affected race relations. Northern liberals dropped their opposition
to racist policies in an effort to unify the nation. In the South, militant populists
frightened whites with their appeal to small southern farmers, both white and AfricanAmerican. The conservative political element in the South abandoned its traditional
policy of racial moderation to attack the populists with charges of race mixing. By
manipulating the vote in African-American areas, the conservatives defeated the
populists in the 1896 elections. These events had significant consequences.
Conservatives assumed the mantle of white supremacy in their battle for political power
and did not turn back. Many agrarian activists blamed the African Americans for their
defeat in the elections and turned to white supremacy.
The final development leading to segregation was the change in American racial
attitudes arising from its imperialist ventures. In 1898, the United States took control of
Hawaii and the Philippines, bringing eight million people of color under its jurisdiction.
The federal government argued that the Philippine people were not capable of governing
themselves. Northern politicians, who supported the domination of the Philippines,
stood on shaky ground when criticizing southern racial attitudes.
By the 1890s, southern states had begun to pass Jim Crow laws restricting the social and
economic rights of African Americans. By 1910, every southern state had segregated
railway stations in which African Americans and whites waited in separate rooms.
Between 1901 and 1907, 10 states segregated public transportation, requiring African
Americans to sit in the rear. States segregated hospitals, prisons, theaters, workplaces,
and cemeteries. Parks had separate areas for African Americans. Mobile, Alabama,
passed a curfew law that required African Americans to be off the street by 10 P.M.
Florida and North Carolina required that separate textbooks be used for AfricanAmerican students, and Florida required the two sets of books to be stored separately.
A complex racial etiquette accompanied the legal restrictions imposed on African
Americans. Whites expected African Americans to demonstrate their inferior social
status through outward signs of deference. African Americans were not to look whites in
the eye. When walking on the same sidewalks, African Americans were to move into the
road to allow whites to pass. African Americans were forced to call whites "Mister,"
while whites called African-American men "boy," or by their first names. This system of
racial etiquette was backed by force. Any African American who violated the cultural
rules faced punishment ranging from intimidation and physical beating to death.
Lynching became a southern racial phenomenon during the period from 1900 to 1910 as
white southerners fought to enforce segregation.
Segregation was not, however, solely a southern phenomenon nor was it enacted solely
against African Americans. Minorities throughout the United States faced segregationin
their residential choices, their jobs, and their use of public space. In the West and
Southwest, Asian Americans and Hispanics faced segregation. Most of
the segregationoutside the South was de facto, although some states and municipalities
passed laws to segregate members of certain ethnic groups. In 1906, for example, the
San Francisco Board of Education segregated all Korean, Chinese, and Japanese
students. By 1913 the state of California had passed a law prohibiting the sale of real
property to all noncitizens, an act aimed at Asian Americans. Even in the absence of
such laws, whites often acted to prohibit the sale of property in certain areas of cities to
nonwhites. Whites who did not want African Americans or Mexican Americans living in
their neighborhood, for example, simply terrorized them into moving out. Another
strategy was to include in property deeds a racial covenant that prohibited the sale of the
property to nonwhites, a practice that was also used to deny Jewish Americans residence
in many neighborhoods. Discrimination in housing led to the creation of ethnic ghettos
in cities with their own schools and businesses. Many labor unions refused to accept
nonwhites, which restricted the occupational choices of nonwhites.
By 1930, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics in most
regions of the country lived in segregated neighborhoods, faced restrictions in their use
of public spaces, and found their choice of work severely limited. Whether it came
through the Jim Crow laws of the southern states or the cultural attitudes of northern
whites, segregation was the tool by which white Americans repressed nonwhites.
References and Further Information
David G. Gutierrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and
the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Leon F.
Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1998); Roger L. Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada: A
Comparative History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); C. Vann
Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 3d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1974).