V. SEGREGATION

• a. The New South and Jim Crow
• b. Segregation in the Military
• c. Black Rights Organizations
• d. For Further Reading

Many Americans assume that segregation has always been among us, or that perhaps it has existed between Blacks and Whites since the days of slavery. In Joel Williamson's The Origins of Segregation, he states that:

It is manifestly true that the modern pattern of segregating and discriminating legislation cam ein the last decade of the nineteenth century and subsequently. These laws sometimes instigaated segregation in the sense that they applied old attitudes to novel situations (as with taxicabs, elevators, and telephone booths). (Williamson vi)

However, there is evidence, according to The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward, that segregation and discrimination were more generally practiced before they became law.

Exploitation of the Negro by the white man goes back to the beginning of relations between the races in modern times, and so do the injustices and brutalities that accompany exploitation (Wooward 11).

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