Segregation in the 1950's

It is without a doubt that there was some serious problems all over the world with discrimation based on race and ethnicity for a long period of time But let's look at the 1950's.

Jim Crow laws...miscegenation...Brown vs....Board of education... Rosa Parks...Little Rock 9...The Civil Rights Act (1957)...Emmett Till.. To name a few examples of African-American discrimination and adversity. The discrimination wasn't only focused entirely on African-Americans, but on any other race. Chinese people were discriminated during the CPR construction, Aboriginal children were put in Residential Schools and members of Aboriginal tribes were often treated extremely poor by the so-called "superior" whites.

So. What were some of the laws (Jim Crow Laws) that the black's had to abide and wholly adhere too?

Pool and Billiard Rooms: It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards. Alabama

Toilet Facilities, Male: Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities. Alabama

Intermarriage: The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void. Arizona
Intermarriage: All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited. Florida

Cohabitation: Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars. Florid

Education: The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately. Florida

More: http://www.nps.gov/malu/forteachers/jim_crow_laws.htm

And of course there were some unspoken laws. For example, a black man or woman could not speak in "an inappropriate" way to a member of the white community or he/she could be punished in unethical and unjust ways. An example of an unspoken law that was broken was in the case of Emmett Till.

Emmett Till was a fourteen year old boy visiting his uncle in Money, Mississippi. He went to a store to buy a chocolate bar and when leaving made the fatal mistake of saying "see you later baby", to the woman at the counter. The woman's husband and his brother followed Till home and asked his uncle if they could speak to him. They captured him and drove him to a discrete part of town. The men beat him brutally and shot him in the head. When Emmett's body was found, his mother requested an open-casket funeral to show the brutality Emmett faced. His eyed had been gouged out, and he was tied to a 70lbs fan with barbed wire and then thrown into a river. The men who did this too him were found innocent, even though they pleaded guilty

Is it still like this? Your first thought would be no. Or at least you hope it would be. Although more rare, there are definetly quiet lynchings and white supremists as well as a Neo-Nazi clan and Neo-Klu Klux Klan. Racism is certainly still a conflict we must overcome, but I believe that it will never be fully abolished. It's hard to predict the future (whether we will overcome racism as well as predjudisms) without looking at the past...and I for one cannot predicted the ever-changing tentative minds of the Human Being.


Racism in the 1950's


Civil Rights Movement





Rosa Parks (above two)