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146-462: Morris J. MacGregor Jr. in his paper "Integration of the Armed Forces 1940–1969", writes concerning the words integration and desegregation : In recent years many historians have come to distinguish between these like-sounding words... The movement toward desegregation, breaking down the nation's Jim Crow system, became increasingly popular in the decade after World War II . Integration, on

292-491: A New York Times article about Louisiana requiring segregated railroad cars. The origin of the phrase "Jim Crow" has often been attributed to " Jump Jim Crow ", a song-and-dance caricature of black people performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice in blackface , first performed in 1828. As a result of Rice's fame, Jim Crow had become by 1838 a pejorative expression meaning "Negro". When southern legislatures passed laws of racial segregation directed against African Americans at

438-417: A Washington Bee editorial wondered if the "reunion" of 1913 was a reunion of those who fought for "the extinction of slavery" or a reunion of those who fought to "perpetuate slavery and who are now employing every artifice and argument known to deceit" to present emancipation as a failed venture. Historian David W. Blight observed that the "Peace Jubilee" at which Wilson presided at Gettysburg in 1913 "was

584-534: A Jim Crow reunion, and white supremacy might be said to have been the silent, invisible master of ceremonies". In Texas , several towns adopted residential segregation laws between 1910 and the 1920s. Legal strictures called for segregated water fountains and restrooms. The exclusion of African Americans also found support in the Republican lily-white movement . The Civil Rights Act of 1875 , introduced by Charles Sumner and Benjamin F. Butler , stipulated

730-471: A combination of poll taxes , literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate white people to vote but gave no relief to most black people. Voter turnout dropped dramatically through the South as a result of these measures. In Louisiana, by 1900, black voters were reduced to 5,320 on the rolls, although they comprised

876-480: A community that didn't, or couldn't, prepare them for it. Writes [ Harvard University sociologist Orlando] Patterson, "The greatest problem now facing African-Americans is their isolation from the tacit norms of the dominant culture, and this is true of all classes." Although widespread, the distinction between integration and desegregation is not universally accepted. For example, it is possible to find references to "court-ordered integration" from sources such as

1022-482: A concurring opinion in Steele v Louisville & Nashville Railway Co 323 192 (1944) issued that day). Murphy used the word in five separate opinions, but after he left the court, "racism" was not used again in an opinion for two decades. It next appeared in the landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia , 388 U.S. 1 (1967). Numerous boycotts and demonstrations against segregation had occurred throughout

1168-476: A guarantee that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in public accommodations, such as inns, public transportation, theaters, and other places of recreation. This Act had little effect in practice. An 1883 Supreme Court decision ruled that the act was unconstitutional in some respects, saying Congress was not afforded control over private persons or corporations. With white southern Democrats forming

1314-579: A huge march on Washington in August 1963, bringing out 200,000 demonstrators in front of the Lincoln Memorial , at the time the largest political assembly in the nation's history. The Kennedy administration now gave full-fledged support to the civil rights movement, but powerful southern congressmen blocked any legislation. After Kennedy was assassinated, President Lyndon B. Johnson called for immediate passage of Kennedy civil rights legislation as

1460-593: A large American army in the process, and set up a network of bases inland. Although there were Loyalists within the Southern colonies, they were concentrated in larger coastal cities and were not great enough in number to overcome the revolutionaries. The British forces at the Battle of Monck's Corner and the Battle of Lenud's Ferry consisted entirely of Loyalists with the exception of the commanding officer ( Banastre Tarleton ). Both white and black Loyalists fought for

1606-718: A large area north of the city (along the Mississippi) becoming known as the German Coast. Still greater numbers immigrated to Texas (especially after 1848), where many bought land and were farmers. Many more German immigrants arrived in Texas after the Civil War, where they created the brewing industry in Houston and elsewhere, became grocers in numerous cities, and also established wide areas of farming. By 1840, New Orleans

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1752-507: A memorial to the martyred president. Johnson formed a coalition with Northern Republicans that led to passage in the House, and with the help of Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen with passage in the Senate early in 1964. For the first time in history, the southern filibuster was broken and the Senate finally passed its version on June 19 by vote of 73 to 27. The Civil Rights Act of 1964

1898-440: A naval flotilla was sent to Charleston harbor, and the threat of landing ground troops was used to compel the collection of tariffs. A compromise was reached by which the tariffs would be gradually reduced, but the underlying argument over states' rights continued to escalate in the following decades. The second issue concerned slavery, primarily the question of whether slavery would be permitted in newly admitted states. The issue

2044-535: A segregated culture had become common. In the Jim Crow context, the presidential election of 1912 was steeply slanted against the interests of African Americans. Most black Americans still lived in the South, where they had been effectively disfranchised, so they could not vote at all. While poll taxes and literacy requirements banned many poor or illiterate people from voting, these stipulations frequently had loopholes that exempted European Americans from meeting

2190-459: A short time during Reconstruction. There were thousands of people on the move, as African Americans tried to reunite families separated by slave sales, and sometimes migrated for better opportunities in towns or other states. Other freed people moved from plantation areas to cities or towns for a chance to get different jobs. At the same time, whites returned from refuges to reclaim plantations or town dwellings. In some areas, many whites returned to

2336-732: A solid voting bloc in Congress, due to having outsize power from keeping seats apportioned for the total population in the South (although hundreds of thousands had been disenfranchised), Congress did not pass another civil rights law until 1957. In 1887, Rev. W. H. Heard lodged a complaint with the Interstate Commerce Commission against the Georgia Railroad company for discrimination, citing its provision of different cars for white and black/colored passengers. The company successfully appealed for relief on

2482-468: A total of 260,000, out of a total white Southern population at the time of around 5.5 million. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6% in the North and about 18% in the South. Northern military deaths were greater than Southern military deaths in absolute numbers, but were two-thirds smaller in terms of proportion of the population affected. After

2628-479: A whole. Over time, pushback and open defiance of the oppressive existing laws grew, until it reached a boiling point in the aggressive, large-scale activism of the 1950s civil rights movement. The NAACP Legal Defense Committee (a group that became independent of the NAACP) – and its lawyer, Thurgood Marshall – brought the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 347 U.S. 483 (1954) before

2774-541: The Detroit News , PBS , or even Encarta . These same sources also use the phrase "court-ordered desegregation", apparently with exactly the same meaning; the Detroit News uses both expressions interchangeably in the same article. When the two terms are confused, it is almost always to use integration in the narrower, more legalistic sense of desegregation ; one rarely, if ever, sees desegregation used in

2920-794: The United States Census Bureau . It is between the Atlantic Ocean and the Western United States , with the Midwestern and Northeastern United States to its north and the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico to its south. Historically, the South was defined as all states south of the 18th-century Mason–Dixon line , the Ohio River , and 36°30′ parallel . Within the South are different subregions such as

3066-558: The 15th Amendment (which extended the right to vote to African American males), African Americans in the South were made free citizens and were given the right to vote. Under Federal protection, white and black Republicans formed constitutional conventions and state governments. Among their accomplishments were creating the first public education systems in Southern states, and providing for welfare through orphanages, hospitals and similar institutions. Northerners came south to participate in politics and business. Some were representatives of

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3212-616: The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin) gained prominence during the era. In baseball, a color line instituted in the 1880s had informally barred black people from playing in the major leagues , leading to the development of the Negro leagues , which featured many famous players. A major breakthrough occurred in 1947, when Jackie Robinson was hired as the first African American to play in Major League Baseball; he permanently broke

3358-609: The British Isles before the American Revolution . In the 1980 census , 34% of Southerners reported that they were of English ancestry; English was the largest reported European ancestry in every Southern state by a large margin. The early colonists engaged in warfare , trade, and cultural exchanges. Those living in the backcountry were more likely to encounter Creek Indians , Cherokee , and Choctaws and other regional native groups. The oldest university in

3504-804: The Chesapeake Bay . The next region to be settled was the Deep South, beginning in Province of Carolina and later the Province of Georgia . The last region to be settled was Appalachia, also settled by the Scotch-Irish . King Charles II of England granted the Charter of Carolina in 1663 for land south of the British Colony of Virginia and north of Spanish Florida . He granted the land to eight lords proprietor . Charles granted

3650-571: The Civil Rights Movement on the ( San Francisco ) Peninsula in the '60s ... and ... an African American," wrote that the "term 'desegregation' is normally reserved to the legal/legislative domain, and it was the legalization of discrimination in public institutions based on race that many fought against in the 1960s. The term 'integration,' on the other hand, pertains to a social domain; it does and should refer to individuals of different background who opt to interact." In their book By

3796-495: The Civil War and Reconstruction era (1865–1877). Following effects included thousands of lynchings (mostly from 1880 to 1930), a segregated system of separate schools and public facilities established from Jim Crow laws that remained until the 1960s, and the widespread use of poll taxes and other methods to deny black and poor people the ability to vote or hold office until the 1960s. Scholars have characterized pockets of

3942-429: The Civil War in 1861–1865. Companion laws excluded almost all African Americans from the vote in the South and deprived them of any representative government. Although in theory, the "equal" segregation doctrine governed public facilities and transportation too, facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to facilities for white Americans ; sometimes, there were no facilities for

4088-638: The Eight Box Law in South Carolina , acted against black and white voters who were illiterate, as they could not follow the directions. While the separation of African Americans from the white general population was becoming legalized and formalized during the Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), it was also becoming customary. Even in cases in which Jim Crow laws did not expressly forbid black people from participating in sports or recreation,

4234-621: The Freedmen's Bureau and other agencies of Reconstruction; some were humanitarians with the intent to help black people. Some were adventurers who hoped to benefit themselves by questionable methods. They were all condemned with the pejorative term of carpetbagger . Some Southerners would also take advantage of the disrupted environment and made money off various schemes, including bonds and financing for railroads. White Southerners who supported Reconstruction policies and efforts became known as scalawags . Secret vigilante organizations such as

4380-753: The Freedom Summer project. The disappearance of the three activists captured national attention and the ensuing outrage was used by Johnson and civil rights activists to build a coalition of northern and western Democrats and Republicans and push Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. It invoked the Commerce Clause to outlaw discrimination in public accommodations (privately owned restaurants, hotels, and stores, and in private schools and workplaces). This use of

4526-552: The Ku Klux Klan  – an organization sworn to perpetuate white supremacy  – had arisen quickly after the war's end in the 1860s, and used lynching , physical attacks, house burnings and other forms of intimidation to keep African Americans from exercising their political rights. Although the first Klan was disrupted by prosecution by the Federal government in the early 1870s, other groups persisted. By

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4672-626: The Patriot cause . Virginia would provide leaders such as commander-in-chief George Washington , and the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson . In 1780 and 1781, the British largely halted reconquest of the northern states and concentrated on the south, where they were told there was a large Loyalist population ready to leap to arms once the royal forces arrived. The British took control of Savannah and Charleston, capturing

4818-614: The Southeast , South Central , Upper South , and Deep South . Maryland , Delaware , Washington, D.C. , and Northern Virginia have become more culturally, economically, and politically aligned in certain aspects with the Northeastern United States and are sometimes identified as part of the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic . The United States Census Bureau continues to define all four places as formally being in

4964-460: The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren . In its pivotal 1954 decision, the Warren Court unanimously (9–0) overturned the 1896 Plessy decision. The Supreme Court found that legally mandated ( de jure ) public school segregation was unconstitutional. The decision had far-reaching social ramifications. Racial integration of all-white collegiate sports teams was high on

5110-596: The United States Census Bureau , A survey conducted by social geographers in 2010 selected thirteen states as the cultural south; Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, and Oklahoma. The Southern region of the United States includes sixteen states. As of 2010, an estimated 114,555,744 people, or thirty seven percent of all U.S. residents, lived in

5256-461: The green anole , the venomous cottonmouth snake, and the American alligator , mammals like the American black bear , the swamp rabbit , and the nine-banded armadillo , and birds such as the roseate spoonbill and the extinct but symbolic carolina parakeet . The question of how to define the boundaries and subregions in the South has long been the focus of research and debate. As defined by

5402-587: The "coloreds only" car. Plessy refused and was immediately arrested. The Citizens Committee of New Orleans fought the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. They lost in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which the Court ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional. The finding contributed to 58 more years of legalized discrimination against black and colored people in

5548-606: The 16th century, reaching a peak in the late 17th century, but the population was small because the Spaniards were relatively uninterested in agriculture, and Florida had no mineral resources. There were regional differences in the Southern colonies, with the three main regions of Tidewater , the Deep South , and Appalachia . The first region to be settled was Tidewater, containing the low-lying plains of southeast Virginia , northeastern North Carolina , southern Maryland and

5694-563: The 1880s in local areas with large black populations, but their voting was suppressed for state and national elections. States passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most black people and many poor white people began to decrease. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states , beginning with Mississippi , passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most black people and tens of thousands of poor white people through

5840-469: The 1920s. However, this did build the foundation for later generations to advance racial equality and de-segregation. Chafe argued that the places essential for change to begin were institutions, particularly black churches, which functioned as centers for community-building and discussion of politics. Additionally, some all-black communities, such as Mound Bayou, Mississippi and Ruthville, Virginia served as sources of pride and inspiration for black society as

5986-523: The 1930s and 1940s. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had been engaged in a series of litigation cases since the early 20th century in efforts to combat laws that disenfranchised black voters across the South. Some of the early demonstrations achieved positive results, strengthening political activism, especially in the post-World War II years. Black veterans were impatient with social oppression after having fought for

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6132-582: The ACC schools were successful in their endeavor – as Pamela Grundy argues, they had learned how to win: In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama . This was not the first time this happened – for example, Parks was inspired by 15-year-old Claudette Colvin doing the same thing nine months earlier – but the Parks act of civil disobedience

6278-741: The British Governor Dunmore of Virginia's promise of freedom for service. Many others were removed by Loyalist owners and became slaves elsewhere in the British Empire. Between 1770 and 1790, there was a sharp decline in the percentage of blacks – from 61% to 44% in South Carolina and from 45% to 36% in Georgia. In addition, some slaveholders were inspired to free their slaves after the Revolution. They were moved by

6424-737: The British Navy. The British Navy did arrive, but so did a stronger French fleet, and Cornwallis was trapped. American and French armies, led by George Washington, forced Cornwallis to surrender his entire army in Yorktown, Virginia in October 1781, effectively winning the North American part of the war. The Revolution provided a shock to slavery in the South and other regions of the new country. Thousands of slaves took advantage of wartime disruption to find their own freedom, catalyzed by

6570-637: The British at the Battle of Kemp's Landing in Virginia. Led by Nathanael Greene and other generals, the Americans engaged in Fabian tactics designed to wear down the British invasion force and to neutralize its strong points one by one. There were numerous battles large and small, with each side claiming some victories. By 1781, however, British General Cornwallis moved north to Virginia, where an approaching army forced him to fortify and await rescue by

6716-697: The Census definition, two U.S. territories located southeast of Florida ( Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands ) are sometimes included as part of the Southern United States. The Federal Aviation Administration includes Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of the South, as does the Agricultural Research Service and the U.S. National Park Service . The first well-dated evidence of human occupation in

6862-479: The Civil War, the South was devastated in terms of infrastructure and economy. Because of states' reluctance to grant voting rights to freedmen, Congress instituted Reconstruction governments. It established military districts and governors to rule over the South until new governments could be established. Many white Southerners who had actively supported the Confederacy were temporarily disenfranchised. Rebuilding

7008-457: The Color of Our Skin (1999) Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown also make a similar distinction between desegregation and integration . They write "... television has ... give[n] white Americans the sensation of having meaningful, repeated contact with blacks without actually having it. We call this phenomenon virtual integration, and it is the primary reason why the integration illusion –

7154-515: The Commerce Clause was upheld by the Warren Court in the landmark case Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States 379 US 241 (1964). By 1965, efforts to break the grip of state disenfranchisement by education for voter registration in southern counties had been underway for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall. In some areas of the Deep South, white resistance made these efforts almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of

7300-553: The Confederacy. Though early in the war, the Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky and the southern portion of Missouri. By March 1862, the Union largely controlled all the border state areas, had shut down all commercial traffic from all Confederate ports, had prevented European recognition of the Confederate government, and was poised to seize New Orleans. The rugged mountainous East Tennessee region attempted to rejoin

7446-642: The East Coast to the Great Lakes. Some noted explorers who encountered and described the Mississippian culture, by then in decline, included Pánfilo de Narváez (1528), Hernando de Soto (1540), and Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville (1699). Native American descendants of the mound-builders include Alabama , Apalachee , Caddo , Cherokee , Chickasaw , Choctaw , Creek , Guale , Hitchiti , Houma , and Seminole peoples, all of whom still reside in

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7592-527: The Jim Crow era, libraries were only available sporadically. Prior to the 20th century, most libraries established for African Americans were school-library combinations. Many public libraries for both European-American and African-American patrons in this period were founded as the result of middle-class activism aided by matching grants from the Carnegie Foundation . In some cases, progressive measures intended to reduce election fraud, such as

7738-478: The Jim Crow laws, and the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine. In 1954, segregation of public schools (state-sponsored) was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka . In some states, it took many years to implement this decision, while the Warren Court continued to rule against Jim Crow legislation in other cases such as Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964). In general,

7884-615: The Jim Crow system. The decisive action ending segregation came when Congress in bipartisan fashion overcame Southern filibusters to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 . A complex interaction of factors came together unexpectedly in the period 1954–1965 to make the momentous changes possible. The Supreme Court had taken the first initiative in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), declaring segregation of public schools unconstitutional. Enforcement

8030-586: The Mississippi River in 1863. In the East, however, the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee beat off attack after attack in its defense of their capital at Richmond. But when Lee tried to move north, he was repulsed (and nearly captured) at Sharpsburg (1862) and Gettysburg (1863). The Confederacy had the resources for a short war, but was unable to finance or supply a longer war. It reversed

8176-616: The President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights enforcement legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings soon began on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended legally sanctioned state barriers to voting for all federal, state and local elections. It also provided for federal oversight and monitoring of counties with historically low minority voter turnout. Years of enforcement have been needed to overcome resistance, and additional legal challenges have been made in

8322-409: The South and Eastern United States and were sent to Oklahoma. By 1856, the South had lost control of Congress, and was no longer able to silence calls for an end to slavery – which came mostly from the more populated, free states of the North. The Republican Party, founded in 1854, pledged to stop the spread of slavery beyond those states where it already existed. After Abraham Lincoln

8468-463: The South generally has a reputation as hot and humid, with long summers and short, mild winters. Most of the South—except for the areas of higher elevations and areas near the western, southern, and some northern fringes—falls in the humid subtropical climate zone. Crops grow readily in the South due to its climate consistently providing growing seasons of at least six months before the first frost. Some common environments include bayous and swamplands,

8614-445: The South include: Historically, the South was defined as all states south of the 18th century Mason–Dixon line , the Ohio River , and 36°30′ parallel . Newer definitions of the South today are harder to define, due to cultural and sub-regional differences throughout the region; however, definitions usually refer to states that are in the southeastern and south central geographic region of the United States. Although not included in

8760-498: The South, the College of William & Mary , was founded in 1693 in Virginia; it pioneered in the teaching of political economy and educated future U.S. Presidents Jefferson , Monroe and Tyler , all from Virginia. Indeed, the entire region dominated politics in the First Party System era: for example, four of the first five presidents – Washington , Jefferson , Madison and Monroe  – were from Virginia. The two oldest public universities are also in

8906-449: The South, the nation's most populous region. The Census Bureau defined three smaller divisions: The Council of State Governments , an organization for communication and coordination between states, includes in its South regional office the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Other terms related to

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9052-399: The South. As the civil rights movement gained momentum and used federal courts to attack Jim Crow statutes, the white-dominated governments of many of the southern states countered by passing alternative forms of resistance. Historian William Chafe has explored the defensive techniques developed inside the African American community to avoid the worst features of Jim Crow as expressed in

9198-435: The South. One rationale for the systematic exclusion of African Americans from southern public society was that it was for their own protection. An early 20th-century scholar suggested that allowing black people to attend white schools would mean "constantly subjecting them to adverse feeling and opinion", which might lead to "a morbid race consciousness". This perspective took anti-black sentiment for granted, because bigotry

9344-479: The South. Other peoples whose ancestral links to the Mississippian culture are less clear, but those who were in the region before the European incursion include the Catawba and the Powhatan . The arrival of European settlers caused a massive population decline in Native Americans , due to Europeans unknowingly spreading diseases that the natives had no immunities towards, numerous violent conflicts, and forcibly relocating them. The predominant culture of

9490-413: The South. To account for cultural variations across the region, some scholars have proposed definitions of the South that do not coincide neatly with state boundaries. The South does not precisely correspond to the entire geographic south of the United States, but primarily includes the south-central and southeastern states. For example, California, which is geographically in the southwestern part of

9636-428: The South: the University of North Carolina (1789) and the University of Georgia (1785). Slavery was legal in all of the Thirteen Colonies prior to the American Revolution in 1776. Britain had slave island colonies in the Caribbean , including Jamaica , Barbados , Nevis , and Antigua , which provided a steady flow of profits from the slave labor that produced sugar. The Southern Colonies differed in that

9782-415: The Southern United States as being authoritarian enclaves from Reconstruction until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . When looked at broadly, studies have shown that Southerners tend to be more conservative than most non-Southerners, with liberalism being mostly predominant in places with a Black majority or urban areas in the South. Although historically a Democratic stronghold , most states in

9928-554: The Southern agenda in the 1950s and 1960s. Involved were issues of equality, racism, and the alumni demand for the top players needed to win high-profile games. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) of flagship state universities in the Southeast took the lead. First they started to schedule integrated teams from the North. Finally, ACC schools – typically under pressure from boosters and civil rights groups – integrated their teams. With an alumni base that dominated local and state politics, society and business,

10074-400: The Southern transportation system depended primarily on river and coastal traffic by boat; both were shut down by the Union Navy . The small railroad system virtually collapsed, so that by 1864 internal travel was so difficult that the Confederate economy was crippled. The Confederate cause was hopeless by the time Atlanta fell and William T. Sherman marched through Georgia in late 1864, but

10220-521: The Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo  – an appointee of the President – was heard to express his opinion of black and white women working together in one government office: "I feel sure that this must go against the grain of the white women. Is there any reason why the white women should not have only white women working across from them on the machines?" The Wilson administration introduced segregation in federal offices, despite much protest from African-American leaders and white progressive groups in

10366-399: The Union address , Johnson asked Congress to "let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined." On June 21, civil rights workers Michael Schwerner , Andrew Goodman , and James Chaney disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi , where they were volunteering in the registration of African American voters as part of

10512-547: The Union as a new state , having opposed secession and slavery compared to most of Tennessee. In the four years of war 1861–65 the South was the primary battleground, with all but two of the major battles taking place on Southern soil. Union forces led numerous campaigns into the western Confederacy, controlling the border states in 1861, the Tennessee River, the Cumberland River and New Orleans in 1862, and

10658-505: The United States and freedom across the world. In 1947 K. Leroy Irvis of Pittsburgh 's Urban League, for instance, led a demonstration against employment discrimination by the city's department stores. It was the beginning of his own influential political career. After World War II, people of color increasingly challenged segregation, as they believed they had more than earned the right to be treated as full citizens because of their military service and sacrifices. The civil rights movement

10804-574: The United States as well, even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures ( Redeemers ) to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era . Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-white movement . In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in

10950-685: The United States. In 1908, Congress defeated an attempt to introduce segregated streetcars into the capital. White Southerners encountered problems in learning free labor management after the end of slavery, and they resented African Americans, who represented the Confederacy 's Civil War defeat: "With white supremacy being challenged throughout the South, many whites sought to protect their former status by threatening African Americans who exercised their new rights." White Southerners used their power to segregate public spaces and facilities in law and reestablish social dominance over black people in

11096-639: The United States. From 1860 to 1861, eleven Southern states plus an additional two Southern states that were claimed and partially controlled seceded from the Union , forming the Confederate States of America . Following the American Civil War , these states were subsequently added back to the Union. Sociological research indicates that Southern collective identity stems from political, historical, demographic, and cultural distinctiveness from

11242-411: The arguments over states' rights that culminated in secession and the Civil War. One of these issues concerned the protective tariffs enacted to assist the growth of the manufacturing sector, primarily in the North. In 1832, in resistance to federal legislation increasing tariffs, South Carolina passed an ordinance of nullification , a procedure in which a state would, in effect, repeal a Federal law. Soon

11388-774: The backdrop of church bombings and assassinations. In summer 1963, there were 800 demonstrations in 200 southern cities and towns, with over 100,000 participants, and 15,000 arrests. In Alabama in June 1963, Governor George Wallace escalated the crisis by defying court orders to admit the first two black students to the University of Alabama . Kennedy responded by sending Congress a comprehensive civil rights bill, and ordered Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to file federal lawsuits against segregated schools, and to deny funds for discriminatory programs. Martin Luther King launched

11534-475: The belief that we are moving toward a colorblind nation – has such a powerful influence on race relations in America today." Reviewing this book in the libertarian magazine Reason , Michael W. Lynch sums up some of their conclusions as "Blacks and whites live, learn, work, pray, play, and entertain separately..." Then, he writes: The problem, as I see it, is that access to the public spheres, specifically

11680-484: The black community at all. Far from equality, as a body of law, Jim Crow institutionalized economic, educational, political and social disadvantages and second-class citizenship for most African Americans living in the United States. After the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909, it became involved in a sustained public protest and campaigns against

11826-511: The broader cultural sense. Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation , " Jim Crow " being a pejorative term for an African American . The last of the Jim Crow laws were generally overturned in 1965 . Formal and informal racial segregation policies were present in other areas of

11972-634: The codes are not an exact copy, such as Virginia and Maryland , the influence of the Barbados Slave Code can be traced throughout various provisions. In the mid-to-late-18th century, large groups of Ulster Scots (later called the Scotch-Irish ) and people from the Anglo-Scottish border region immigrated and settled in the back country of Appalachia and the Piedmont . They were the largest group of non-English immigrants from

12118-674: The color bar. Baseball teams continued to integrate in the following years, leading to the full participation of black baseball players in the Major Leagues in the 1960s. Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie , also referred to as the Southern States , the American South , the Southland , Dixieland , or simply the South ) is one of the four census regions defined by

12264-524: The commercial sphere, often depends on being comfortable with the norms of white society. If a significant number of black children aren't comfortable with them, it isn't by choice: It's because they were isolated from those norms. It's one thing for members of the black elite and upper middle class to choose to retire to predominantly black neighborhoods after a lucrative day's work in white America. It's quite another for people to be unable to enter that commercial sphere because they spent their formative years in

12410-407: The country, is not considered part of the South. However, the geographically southeastern state of Georgia is. The South, being home to some of the most racially diverse areas in the United States, is known for having developed its own distinct culture , with different customs, fashion, architecture , musical styles , and cuisines , which have distinguished it in many ways from other areas of

12556-784: The courts to ensure the ability of voters to elect candidates of their choice. For instance, many cities and counties introduced at-large election of council members, which resulted in many cases of diluting minority votes and preventing election of minority-supported candidates. In 2013, the Roberts Court , in Shelby County v. Holder , removed the requirement established by the Voting Rights Act that Southern states needed Federal approval for changes in voting policies. Several states immediately made changes in their laws restricting voting access. The Jim Crow laws and

12702-581: The eleven Confederate states, states such as Tennessee (especially East Tennessee ), Virginia (which included West Virginia at the time), and North Carolina were home to the largest populations of Unionists. Many areas of Southern Appalachia harbored pro-Union sentiment as well. As many as 100,000 men living in states under Confederate control would serve in the Union Army or pro-Union guerrilla groups. Although Southern Unionists came from all classes, most differed socially, culturally, and economically from

12848-409: The emphasis is on racial balance in areas of occupation, education, residency, and the like. From the beginning the military establishment rightly understood that the breakup of the all-black unit would in a closed society necessarily mean more than mere desegregation. It constantly used the terms integration and equal treatment and opportunity to describe its racial goals. Rarely, if ever, does one find

12994-553: The end of the 15th century – the Mississippian culture . The Mississippian culture was a complex, mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Southeastern United States from approximately 800 AD to 1500 AD. Natives had elaborate and lengthy trading routes connecting their main residential and ceremonial centers extending through the river valleys and from

13140-567: The end of the 19th century, these statutes became known as Jim Crow laws. In January 1865, an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States was proposed by Congress and ratified as the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865. During the Reconstruction era of 1865–1877, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the U.S. South for freedmen , African Americans who were former slaves, and

13286-619: The grounds it offered "separate but equal" accommodation. In 1890, Louisiana passed a law requiring separate accommodations for colored and white passengers on railroads. Louisiana law distinguished between "white", "black" and "colored" (that is, people of mixed European and African ancestry). The law had already specified that black people could not ride with white people, but colored people could ride with white people before 1890. A group of concerned black, colored and white citizens in New Orleans formed an association dedicated to rescinding

13432-781: The high rate of lynchings in the South were major factors that led to the Great Migration during the first half of the 20th century. Because opportunities were very limited in the South, African Americans moved in great numbers to cities in Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western states to seek better lives. African American athletes faced much discrimination during the Jim Crow era with white opposition leading to their exclusion from most organized sporting competitions. The boxers Jack Johnson and Joe Louis (both of whom became world heavyweight boxing champions ) and track and field athlete Jesse Owens (who won four gold medals at

13578-510: The institution became even more deeply an integral part of the South's economy. With the opening up of frontier lands after the government forced most Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi, there was a major migration of both whites and blacks to those territories. From the 1820s through the 1850s, more than one million enslaved Africans were transported to the Deep South in forced migration, two-thirds of them by slave traders and

13724-567: The invention of the cotton gin , short staple cotton could be grown more widely. This led to an explosion of cotton cultivation, especially in the frontier uplands of Georgia, Alabama and other parts of the Deep South, as well as riverfront areas of the Mississippi Delta. Migrants poured into those areas in the early decades of the 19th century, when county population figures rose and fell as swells of people kept moving west. The expansion of cotton cultivation required more slave labor, and

13870-520: The labor-intensive cultivation of tobacco, the first cash crop of Virginia. Tobacco exhausted the soil quickly, requiring that farmers regularly clear new fields. They used old fields as pasture, and for crops such as corn wheat, or allowed them to grow into woodlots. The Barbados Slave Code served as the basis for the slave codes adopted in the British American colonies, including Carolina , Georgia , and Antigua . In other colonies where

14016-574: The land in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660. The granted lands included all or part of the present-day U.S. states of North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. In the British colonies, immigration began in 1607 and continued until the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775. Settlers cleared land, built houses and outbuildings, and on their own farms. The Southern rich owned large plantations that dominated export agriculture and used slaves. Many were involved in

14162-504: The land to farm for a while. Some freedpeople left the South altogether for states such as Ohio and Indiana, and later, Kansas. Thousands of others joined the migration to new opportunities in the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta bottomlands, and Texas. With passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (which outlawed slavery), the 14th Amendment (which granted full U.S. citizenship to African Americans) and

14308-410: The law. Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat elected from New Jersey, but he was born and raised in the South, and was the first Southern-born president of the post- Civil War period. He appointed Southerners to his Cabinet . Some quickly began to press for segregated workplaces, although the city of Washington, D.C., and federal offices had been integrated since after the Civil War. In 1913, Secretary of

14454-488: The law. The group persuaded Homer Plessy to test it; he was a man of color who was of fair complexion and one-eighth "Negro" in ancestry. In 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket from New Orleans on the East Louisiana Railway. Once he had boarded the train, he informed the train conductor of his racial lineage and took a seat in the whites-only car. He was directed to leave that car and sit instead in

14600-399: The legal system, unbalanced economic power, and intimidation and psychological pressure. Chafe says "protective socialization by black people themselves" was created inside the community in order to accommodate white-imposed sanctions while subtly encouraging challenges to those sanctions. Known as "walking the tightrope", such efforts at bringing about change were only slightly effective before

14746-501: The majority of the state's population. By 1910, only 730 black people were registered, less than 0.5% of eligible black men. "In 27 of the state's 60 parishes, not a single black voter was registered any longer; in 9 more parishes, only one black voter was." The cumulative effect in North Carolina meant that black voters were eliminated from voter rolls during the period from 1896 to 1904. The growth of their thriving middle class

14892-672: The mid-to-late-1870s, some upper class Southerners created increasing resistance to the altered social structure. Paramilitary organizations such as the White League in Louisiana (1874), the Red Shirts in Mississippi (1875) and rifle clubs, all "White Line" organizations, used organized violence against Republicans , both black and white, to remove Republicans from political office, repress and bar black voting, and restore

15038-427: The minority of black people who had been free before the war. In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures as violent insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan , White League , and Red Shirts disrupted Republican organizing, ran Republican officeholders out of town, and lynched black voters as an intimidation tactic to suppress the black vote. Extensive voter fraud

15184-502: The new restrictions. Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence the state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked. While public schools had been established by Reconstruction legislatures for the first time in most Southern states, those for black children were consistently underfunded compared to schools for white children, even when considered within

15330-643: The north and midwest. He appointed segregationist Southern politicians because of his own firm belief that racial segregation was in the best interest of black and European Americans alike. At the Great Reunion of 1913 at Gettysburg , Wilson addressed the crowd on July 4, the semi-centennial of Abraham Lincoln 's declaration that " all men are created equal ": How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and majestic, as state after state has been added to this, our great family of free men! In sharp contrast to Wilson,

15476-632: The number of immigrants arriving at Southern ports began to increase, although the North continued to receive the most immigrants. Huguenots were among the first settlers in Charleston, along with the largest number of Orthodox Jews outside of New York City. Numerous Irish immigrants settled in New Orleans, establishing a distinct ethnic enclave now known as the Irish Channel . Germans also went to New Orleans and its environs, resulting in

15622-632: The old, much more moderate NAACP in taking leadership roles. King organized massive demonstrations, that seized massive media attention in an era when network television news was an innovative and universally watched phenomenon. SCLC, student activists and smaller local organizations staged demonstrations across the South. National attention focused on Birmingham , Alabama, where protesters mostly young teenagers, faced off against Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor , Connor arrested 900 on one day alone. The next day Connor unleashed billy clubs, police dogs, and high-pressure water hoses to disperse and punish

15768-816: The original Southern states was English . In the 17th century, most voluntary immigrants were of English origin and settled chiefly along the eastern coast but had pushed as far inland as the Appalachian Mountains by the 18th century. The majority of early English settlers were indentured servants , who gained freedom after working off their passage. The wealthier men, typically members of the English landed gentry , who paid their way received land grants known as headrights to encourage settlement. The Spanish and French established settlements in Florida , Texas , and Louisiana . The Spanish settled Florida in

15914-452: The other hand, Professor Oscar Handlin maintains, implies several things not yet necessarily accepted in all areas of American society. In one sense it refers to the "levelling of all barriers to association other than those based on ability, taste, and personal preference"; in other words, providing equal opportunity. But in another sense integration calls for the random distribution of a minority throughout society. Here, according to Handlin,

16060-559: The others by masters who moved there. Planters in the Upper South sold slaves in excess of their needs as they shifted from tobacco to mixed agriculture. Many enslaved families were broken up, as planters preferred mostly strong males for field work. Two major political issues that festered in the first half of the 19th century caused political alignment along sectional lines, strengthened the identities of North and South as distinct regions with certain strongly opposed interests, and fed

16206-470: The presidential election resulted in the government withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South. White Democrats had regained political power in every Southern state. These Southern, white, " Redeemer " governments legislated Jim Crow laws, officially segregating the country's population. Jim Crow laws were a manifestation of authoritarian rule specifically directed at one racial group. Black people were still elected to local offices throughout

16352-468: The principles of the Revolution, along with Quaker and Methodist preachers who worked to encourage slaveholders to free their slaves. Planters such as George Washington often freed slaves by their wills. In the Upper South , more than 10% of all blacks were free by 1810, a significant expansion from pre-war proportions of less than 1% free. Cotton became dominant in the lower South after 1800. After

16498-463: The proportion of their populations that were African American slaves was much higher than in the Middle Colonies and New England Colonies , as shown on the map. According to Bertram Wyatt-Brown , "Bondage was an answer to an economic need. The South was not founded to create slavery; slavery was recruited to perpetuate the South." The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 served as the basis for

16644-572: The rebels fought on until Lee's army surrendered in April 1865. Once the Confederate forces surrendered, the region moved into the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877), in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the destroyed region and grant civil rights to freed slaves. Southerners who were against the Confederate cause during the Civil War were known as Southern Unionists . They were also known as Union Loyalists or Lincoln's Loyalists. Within

16790-624: The region have in recent decades come to favor Republicans , although both the Republican and Democratic Party are competitive in certain Southern swing states . The region contains almost all of the Bible Belt , an area of high Protestant church attendance, especially evangelical churches such as the Southern Baptist Convention . Historically, the South relied heavily on agriculture as its main economic base and

16936-446: The region were historically dominated by a small rural elite. The historical and cultural development of the South has been profoundly influenced by the institution of slave labor , especially in the Deep South and coastal plain areas, from the early 1600s to mid-1800s. This includes the presence of a large proportion of African Americans within the population, support for the doctrine of states' rights , and legacy of racism magnified by

17082-444: The regions dominant pre-war planter class . The South suffered more than the North overall, as the Union strategy of attrition warfare meant that Lee could not replace his casualties, and the total war waged by Sherman, Sheridan and other Union armies devastated the infrastructure and caused widespread poverty and distress. The Confederacy suffered military losses of 95,000 soldiers killed in action and 165,000 who died of disease, for

17228-410: The remaining Jim Crow laws were generally overturned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 . Southern state anti-miscegenation laws were generally overturned in the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia . The earliest known use of the phrase "Jim Crow law" can be dated to 1884 in a newspaper article summarizing congressional debate. The term appears in 1892 in the title of

17374-433: The requirements. In Oklahoma , for instance, anyone qualified to vote before 1866, or related to someone qualified to vote before 1866 (a kind of " grandfather clause "), was exempted from the literacy requirement; but the only men who had the franchise before that year were white or European-American. European Americans were effectively exempted from the literacy testing, whereas black Americans were effectively singled out by

17520-429: The rest of the United States; however, this has declined since around the late 20th century, with many Southern areas becoming a melting pot of cultures and people. Ethnic groups in the South were the most diverse among American regions, and include strong European (especially English , Scots-Irish , Scottish , Irish , French , and Spanish ), African , and Native American ancestries. The politics and economy of

17666-548: The slave codes adopted in the British American colonies of the Province of Carolina and the Province of Georgia . In other colonies where the slaves codes were not an exact copy, such as the Colony of Virginia and the Province of Maryland , the influence of the Barbados Slave Code can be traced throughout various provisions. During the American Revolutionary War , the Southern colonies helped embrace

17812-513: The south United States occurs around 9500 BC with the appearance of the earliest documented Americans, who are now referred to as Paleo-Indians . Paleoindians were hunter-gatherers that roamed in bands and frequently hunted megafauna . Several cultural stages, such as Archaic ( c.  8000 –1000 BC) and the Woodland ( c.  1000 BC – AD 1000), preceded what the Europeans found at

17958-532: The southern pine forests , the warm temperate montane forest of the Appalachians, the savannas of the southern Great Plains, and the subtropical jungle and maritime forests along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Unique flora include various species of magnolia, rhododendron, cane, palm, and oak, among others. Fauna of the region is also diverse, encompassing a plethora of amphibian species, reptiles such as

18104-444: The state of Kentucky attempted to remain neutral, and it could only do so briefly. When Lincoln called for troops to suppress what he referred to as "combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary" judicial or martial means, four more states decided to secede and join the Confederacy (which then moved its capital to Richmond, Virginia). Although the Confederacy had large supplies of captured munitions and many volunteers, it

18250-472: The states of the former Confederate States of America and in some others, beginning in the 1870s. Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson , in which the Supreme Court laid out its " separate but equal " legal doctrine concerning facilities for African Americans. Moreover, public education had essentially been segregated since its establishment in most of the South after

18396-413: The strained finances of the postwar South where the decreasing price of cotton kept the agricultural economy at a low. Like schools, public libraries for black people were underfunded, if they existed at all, and they were often stocked with secondhand books and other resources. These facilities were not introduced for African Americans in the South until the first decade of the 20th century. Throughout

18542-502: The three voting-rights activists in Mississippi in 1964 and the state's refusal to prosecute the murderers, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism against black people, had gained national attention. Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965 , by county and state troopers on peaceful Alabama marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge en route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery , persuaded

18688-462: The traditional low-tariff policy of the South by imposing a new 15% tax on all imports from the Union. The Union blockade stopped most commerce from entering the South, and smugglers avoided the tax, so the Confederate tariff produced too little revenue to finance the war. Inflated currency was the solution, but that created distrust of the Richmond government. Because of low investment in railroads,

18834-522: The word " racism " into the lexicon of U.S. Supreme Court opinions in Korematsu v. United States , 323 U.S. 214 (1944). In his dissenting opinion, Murphy stated that by upholding the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Court was sinking into "the ugly abyss of racism". This was the first time that "racism" was used in Supreme Court opinion (Murphy used it twice in

18980-475: The word desegregation in military files that include much correspondence. Similarly, Keith M. Woods writes on the need for precision in journalistic language: " Integration happens when a monolith is changed, like when a black family moves into an all-white neighborhood. Integration happens even without a mandate from the law. Desegregation ," on the other hand, "was the legal remedy to segregation." In 1997, Henry Organ, who identified himself as "a participant in

19126-480: The young demonstrators with a brutality that horrified the nation. The brutality undermined the image of a modernizing progressive urban South. President John F. Kennedy , who had been calling for moderation, threatened to use federal troops to restore order in Birmingham. The result in Birmingham was compromise by which the new mayor opened the library, golf courses, and other city facilities to both races, against

19272-402: Was a cosmopolitan port with a variety of jobs that attracted more immigrants than other areas of the South. Because of lack of investment, however, construction of railroads to span the region lagged behind the North. People relied most heavily on river traffic for getting their crops to market and for transportation. Between 1830 and 1850, Native Americans were removed from their home states in

19418-471: Was also used. In one instance, an outright coup or insurrection in coastal North Carolina led to the violent removal of democratically elected Republican party executive and representative officials, who were either hunted down or hounded out. Gubernatorial elections were close and had been disputed in Louisiana for years, with increasing violence against black Americans during campaigns from 1868 onward. The Compromise of 1877 to gain Southern support in

19564-418: Was chosen, symbolically, as an important catalyst in the growth of the post-1954 civil rights movement ; activists built the Montgomery bus boycott around it, which lasted more than a year and resulted in desegregation of the privately run buses in the city. Civil rights protests and actions, together with legal challenges, resulted in a series of legislative and court decisions which contributed to undermining

19710-514: Was difficult as people grappled with the effects of a new labor economy of a free market in the midst of a widespread agricultural depression. In addition, the limited infrastructure the South had was mostly destroyed by the war. At the same time, the North was rapidly industrializing. To avoid the social effects of the war, most of the Southern states initially passed black codes . During Reconstruction, these were mostly legally nullified by federal law and anti-Confederate legislatures, which existed for

19856-412: Was elected the first Republican president in 1860, seven cotton states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America before Lincoln was inaugurated. The United States government, both outgoing and incoming, refused to recognize the Confederacy, and when the new Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered his troops to open fire on Fort Sumter in April 1861, war broke out. Only

20002-417: Was energized by a number of flashpoints, including the 1946 police beating and blinding of World War II veteran Isaac Woodard while he was in U.S. Army uniform. In 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981 , ending racial discrimination in the armed services. That same year, Silas Herbert Hunt enrolled in the University of Arkansas , effectively starting the desegregation of education in

20148-469: Was initially finessed by political compromises designed to balance the number of "free" and "slave" states. The issue resurfaced in a more virulent form, however, around the time of the Mexican–American War , which raised the stakes by adding new territories primarily on the Southern side of the imaginary geographic divide. Congress opposed allowing slavery in these territories. Before the Civil War,

20294-471: Was outlawed for businesses with 25 or more employees, as well as apartment houses. The South resisted until the last moment, but as soon as the new law was signed by President Johnson on July 2, 1964, it was widely accepted across the nation. There was only a scattering of diehard opposition, typified by restaurant owner Lester Maddox in Georgia. In January 1964, President Lyndon Johnson met with civil rights leaders. On January 8, during his first State of

20440-470: Was predominantly rural until after World War II . Since the 1940s, the region has become more economically diversified and metropolitan , helping attract both national and international migrants. In the 21st century, it is the fastest-growing region in the United States, with Houston being the region's largest city. The South is a diverse meteorological region with numerous climatic zones, including temperate , sub-tropical , tropical , and arid —though

20586-647: Was rapid in the North and border states, but was deliberately stopped in the South by the movement called Massive Resistance , sponsored by rural segregationists who largely controlled the state legislatures. Southern liberals, who counseled moderation, were shouted down by both sides and had limited impact. Much more significant was the civil rights movement, especially the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) headed by Martin Luther King Jr. It largely displaced

20732-457: Was slowed. In North Carolina and other Southern states, black people suffered from being made invisible in the political system: "[W]ithin a decade of disfranchisement, the white supremacy campaign had erased the image of the black middle class from the minds of white North Carolinians." In Alabama , tens of thousands of poor whites were also disenfranchised, although initially legislators had promised them they would not be affected adversely by

20878-516: Was slower than the Union in dealing with the border states. While the Upland South border states of Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, as well as the District of Columbia , continued to permit slavery during the Civil War, they remained with the Union though Kentucky and Missouri both had rival Confederate governments that formed that were admitted and recognized by

21024-569: Was the most powerful affirmation of equal rights ever made by Congress. It guaranteed access to public accommodations such as restaurants and places of amusement, authorized the Justice Department to bring suits to desegregate facilities in schools, gave new powers to the Civil Rights Commission ; and allowed federal funds to be cut off in cases of discrimination. Furthermore, racial, religious and gender discrimination

21170-414: Was the wealthiest city in the country and the third largest in population. The success of the city was based on the growth of international trade associated with products being shipped to and from the interior of the country down the Mississippi River. New Orleans also had the largest slave market in the country, as traders brought slaves by ship and overland to sell to planters across the Deep South. The city

21316-462: Was widespread in the South after slavery became a racial caste system. Justifications for white supremacy were provided by scientific racism and negative stereotypes of African Americans . Social segregation, from housing to laws against interracial chess games, was justified as a way to prevent black men from having sex with white women and in particular the rapacious Black Buck stereotype. In 1944, Associate Justice Frank Murphy introduced

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