Desegregation in the United States

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Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact on the settlement patterns of various groups. [1] This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American civil rights movement, both before and after the US Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education , particularly desegregation of the school systems and the military. Racial integration of society was a closely related goal.

Contents

US military

Early history

Starting with King Philip's War in the 17th century, Black and White Americans served together in an integrated environment in the Thirteen Colonies. They continued to fight alongside each other in every American war until the War of 1812. Black people would not fight in integrated units again until the Korean war. [2] Thousands of Black men fought in the new continental navy, on the side of rebellious colonists in the American revolutionary war. Their names, accomplishments and total numbers are unknown due to poor record keeping. [ citation needed ]

During the American Civil War, Black people enlisted in large numbers. They were mostly enslaved African Americans who had escaped the South, though there were many Northern Black unionists as well. More than 180,000 Black people served with the Union army and navy during the civil war in segregated units, known as the United States Colored Troops, under the command of White officers. They were recorded and are part of the National Park Service's Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System (CWSS). [3] Around 18,000 Black people also joined the Union Navy as sailors, who are also part of the CWSS. [3]

World Wars I and II

Despite the NAACP lobbying for the commissioning of more Black officers, they were severely underrepresented throughout World War I. Upon entering office, President Woodrow Wilson officially segregated the United States navy for the first time in its history. [4]

During World War II, most officers were White, and the majority of Black troops still served as truck drivers and as stevedores. [5] The Red Ball Express, which was instrumental in facilitating the rapid advance of allied forces across France after D-Day, was operated almost exclusively by African American truck drivers.[ citation needed ] In the midst of the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was severely short of replacement troops for existing military units, all of which were entirely white in composition. Thus, he made the decision to allow African American soldiers to join White military units in combat for the first time; this represented the first step toward a desegregated United States military. Eisenhower's decision in this case was strongly opposed by his own army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, who was outraged by the decision, and said that the American public would take offense with the integration of the military units. [5]

For the US Army air corps, see the Tuskegee Airmen.

For the US Army, see the 761st Tank Battalion (United States).

In the Second World War, the US Navy first experimented with integration aboard USCGC Sea Cloud, then later on USS Mason, (both commanded by Carlton Skinner) a ship with Black crew members and commanded by White officers. Some called it "Eleanor's folly" after President Franklin Roosevelt's wife. [6] [ citation needed ]Mason's purpose had been to allow Black sailors to serve in the full range of billets (positions) rather than being restricted to stewards and mess men, as they were on most ships. The navy was pressured to train Black sailors for billets by Eleanor Roosevelt, who insisted that they be given the jobs for which they had trained.

"17th Special" Seabees with the 7th Marines on Peleliu made national news in an official U.S. Navy press release. NARA-532537 "Group of CBs acting as stretcher bearers for the 7th Marines. Peleliu.", 09-1944 - NARA - 532537.jpg
"17th Special" Seabees with the 7th Marines on Peleliu made national news in an official U.S. Navy press release. NARA-532537

The US Navy's newest component, the Seabees, had the same ingrained attitudes and approaches but ended up at the forefront of change. In February 1942, the CNO, Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark, recommended African Americans for ratings in the construction trades. In April, the navy announced it would enlist African Americans in the Seabees. Even so, those men were put into segregated units, the 34th [8] and 80th [9] Naval Construction Battalions (NCBs). Both had White southern officers and Black enlisted. Both battalions experienced problems with this arrangement, which led to the replacement of the officers. In addition, many of the stevedore battalions (special construction battalions) were segregated. However, by war's end, many of those special construction battalions were the first fully integrated units in the US navy. [10] The war's end also brought the decommissioning of every one of those units.

Modern history

On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9981 ordered the integration of the armed forces following World War II, a major advance in civil rights. [11] Using the executive order meant that Truman could bypass Congress. Representatives of the Solid South, all White Democrats, would likely have stonewalled related legislation.

For instance, two months prior to Truman's executive order in May 1948, Richard B. Russell, Democratic senator from Georgia, unsuccessfully attempted to attach a "Freedom of Selection" amendment granting draftees and new inductees the opportunity to choose whether or not they wanted to serve in segregated military units to the Selective Service Act that was being debated in Congress. [12]

At the end of June 1950, the Korean War broke out. The US army had accomplished little desegregation in peacetime and sent the segregated Eighth Army to defend South Korea. Most Black soldiers served in segregated support units in the rear. The remainder served in segregated combat units, most notably the 24th Infantry regiment. The first months of the Korean war were some of the most disastrous in US military history. The North Korean People's Army nearly drove the American-led United Nations forces off the Korean peninsula. Faced with staggering losses in White units, commanders on the ground began accepting Black replacements, thus integrating their units. The practice occurred all over the Korean battle lines, and proved that integrated combat units could perform under fire. The army high command took notice. On 26 July 1951, exactly three years after Truman issued Executive Order 9981, the US army formally announced its plans to desegregate.[ citation needed ]

On 12 October 1972, a racially fraught riot occurred on USS Kitty Hawk. [13] "Despite the presence of a Black executive officer, the ship's second-in-command, many Black sailors felt they were dealt harsher punishments and menial assignments because of their race". [14]

US housing law

The practice of housing segregation and racial discrimination has had a long history in the United States. Until the American civil rights movement in the 1960s, segregated neighborhoods were enforceable by law. The Fair Housing Act ended discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, color, religion, and national origin. This was the first housing law against discrimination. The passage of this act was contentious. It was meant to be a direct follow up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, from 1966 to 1967, it failed to garner enough political support for its passage in the United States Congress. At that time, several states had passed their own fair housing laws and Congress was not convinced that a federal law was necessary.

It was only after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on 4 April 1968 and the ensuing riots that the bill was finally passed. It was signed into law on 11 April 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a strong proponent. Johnson called the new law one of the "promises of a century … It proclaims that fair housing for all — all human beings who live in this country — is now a part of the American way of life." Since the act's passage in 1968, it has been amended to include sex, familial status, and disability. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity within the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is charged with administering and enforcing this law.

US education system

Hate mail written in the late 1950s regarding desegregation of Little Rock Central High School is projected over actresses Mary-Pat Green and Gia McGlone in Arkansas Repertory Theatre's 2007 production of The Legacy Project: It Happened in Little Rock. The Legacy Project It Happened in Little Rock.jpg
Hate mail written in the late 1950s regarding desegregation of Little Rock Central High School is projected over actresses Mary-Pat Green and Gia McGlone in Arkansas Repertory Theatre's 2007 production of The Legacy Project: It Happened in Little Rock .

After Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the lawful segregation of African American children in schools became a violation of the 14th Amendment. [15] In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that forced busing of students may be ordered to achieve racial desegregation. However, court-enforced school desegregation efforts have decreased over time.

A major decline in manufacturing in northern cities, with a shift of jobs to suburbs, the South, and overseas, has led to increases in the numbers of residents of all races in suburbs, and shifts in population from the North and Great Plains to the southwest, the Pacific Northwest, and the South. Left behind in many northeastern and midwestern inner cities have been the poorest Black people and other minorities. According to Jonathan Kozol, in the early 21st century, US schools have become as segregated as they were in the late 1960s. [16]

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University says that desegregation of US public schools peaked in 1988. As of 2005, the proportion of Black students at schools with a White majority was at "a level lower than in any year since 1968". [17]

Some critics of school desegregation have argued that court-enforced desegregation efforts of the 1960s were either unnecessary or self-defeating, ultimately resulting in White flight from cities to suburbs. Middle class and wealthy White people continued moving from cities to suburbs during the 1970s and later, in part to escape certain integrated public school systems, but also as part of the suburbanization caused by movement of jobs to suburbs, continuing state and federal support for expansion of highways, and changes in the economy.

Some White parents in Louisiana said that they were afraid to drop off their children because of all the mobs surrounding the desegregated schools. [18]

Sociologist David Armor states in his 1995 book Forced Justice: School Desegregation and the Law that efforts to change the racial compositions of schools had not contributed substantially to academic achievement by minorities. Carl L. Bankston and Stephen J. Caldas, in their books A Troubled Dream: The Promise and Failure of School Desegregation in Louisiana (2002) and Forced to Fail: The Paradox of School Desegregation (2005), argued that continuing racial inequality in the larger American society had undermined efforts to force schools to desegregate. [19] They maintained that racial inequality had resulted in popular associations between school achievement and race. Therefore, the achievement levels of American schools were generally associated with their class and racial compositions. This meant that even parents without racial prejudice tended to seek middle class or better residential neighborhoods in seeking the best schools for their children. As a result, efforts to impose court-ordered desegregation often led to school districts with too few White students for effective desegregation, as White students increasingly left for majority White suburban districts or for private schools.

Asian Americans

The increasing diversity of American society has led to more complex issues related to school and ethnic proportion. In the 1994 federal court case Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District , parents of Chinese American schoolchildren alleged that racial quotas under a 1983 consent decree constituted racial discrimination in violation of the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. The desegregation plan did not allow any school to enroll more than 50% of any ethnic group. Originally intended to aid integration of Black students, the ruling had a negative effect on the admissions of Chinese Americans, who had become the district's largest ethnic group.

The newspaper AsianWeek documented the Chinese American parents' challenge. Since Chinese Americans were already nearly half the student population, the consent decree had the effect of requiring the competitive Lowell High School in San Francisco, California, to apply much higher academic admission standards for Chinese American students. However, the civil rights group Chinese for Affirmative Action sided with the school district, arguing that such standards were not harmful to Chinese Americans, and were necessary to avoid the resegregation of schools. In 2006, Chinese parents continued to protest against race-based school assignments. [20]

See also

Related Research Articles

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown, and its related cases, paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.

Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), was a significant United States Supreme Court case dealing with the planned desegregation busing of public school students across district lines among 53 school districts in metropolitan Detroit. It concerned the plans to integrate public schools in the United States following the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Executive Order 9981</span> 1948 order by President Truman

Executive Order 9981 was issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. This executive order abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces. The Order led to the re-integration of the services during the Korean War (1950–1953). It was a crucial event in the post-World War II civil rights movement and a major achievement of Truman's presidency. Executive Order 9981 was inspired, in part, by an attack on Isaac Woodard who was an American soldier and African-American World War II veteran. On February 12, 1946, hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army, he was attacked while still in uniform by South Carolina police as he was taking a bus home. The attack left Woodard completely and permanently blind. President Harry S. Truman ordered a federal investigation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desegregation busing</span> Failed attempt to racially diversify American public schools

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial integration</span> Process of ending racial segregation

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Woodard</span> American WWII veteran and victim of racial abuse

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Military history of African Americans</span> Aspect of African American history

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial segregation in the United States</span> De jure and de facto separation of whites and non-whites

Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment, and transportation have been systematically separated in the United States based on racial categorizations. Segregation was the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from whites, as well as the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority and mainstream communities. While mainly referring to the physical separation and provision of separate facilities, it can also refer to other manifestations such as prohibitions against interracial marriage, and the separation of roles within an institution. The U.S. Armed Forces were formally segregated until 1948, as black units were separated from white units but were still typically led by white officers.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racism against African Americans in the U.S. military</span>

African Americans have served the U.S. military in every war the United States has fought. Formalized discrimination against black people who have served in the U.S. military lasted from its creation during the American Revolutionary War to the end of segregation by President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9981 in 1948. Although desegregation within the U.S. military was legally established with President Truman's executive order, full integration of African-American servicemen was not established until 1950 in the Navy and Air Force, 1953 in the Army, and 1960 in the Marine Corps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lincoln Ragsdale</span> African-American rights activist and Tuskegee Airman (1926–1995)

Lincoln Johnson Ragsdale Sr. was an influential leader in the Phoenix-area Civil Rights Movement. Known for his outspokenness, Ragsdale was instrumental in various reform efforts in the Valley, including voting rights and the desegregation of schools, neighborhoods, and public accommodations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desegregation in the United States Marine Corps</span>

The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is a desegregated force, made up of troops of all races working and fighting alongside each other. In 1776 and 1777, a dozen African American Marines served in the American Revolutionary War, but from 1798 to 1942, the USMC followed a racially discriminatory policy of denying African Americans the opportunity to serve as Marines. For more than 140 years, the Marines recruited primarily European Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans, along with a few Asian Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces</span> Policies on racial separation in the U.S. military

A series of policies were formerly issued by the U.S. military which entailed the separation of white and non-white American soldiers, prohibitions on the recruitment of people of color and restrictions of ethnic minorities to supporting roles. Since the American Revolutionary War, each branch of the United States Armed Forces implemented differing policies surrounding racial segregation. Racial discrimination in the U.S. military was officially opposed by Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9981 in 1948. The goal was equality of treatment and opportunity. Jon Taylor says, "The wording of the Executive Order was vague because it neither mentioned segregation or integration." Racial segregation was ended in the mid-1950s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School segregation in the United States</span> Racial separation in schools

School segregation in the United States was the segregation of students based on their ethnicity. While not prohibited from having schools, various minorities were barred from most schools, schools for whites. Segregation laws were dismantled in 1954 by the U.S. Supreme Court because of the successes being attained during the Civil Rights Movement. Segregation continued longstanding exclusionary policies in much of the Southern United States after the Civil War. School integration in the United States took place at different times in different areas and often met resistance. Jim Crow laws codified segregation. These laws were influenced by the history of slavery and discrimination in the US. Secondary schools for African Americans in the South were called training schools instead of high schools in order to appease racist whites and focused on vocational education. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which banned segregated school laws, school segregation took de facto form. School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the government became strict on schools' plans to combat segregation more effectively as a result of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Voluntary segregation by income appears to have increased since 1990. Racial segregation has either increased or stayed constant since 1990, depending on which definition of segregation is used. In general, definitions based on the amount of interaction between black and white students show increased racial segregation, while definitions based on the proportion of black and white students in different schools show racial segregation remaining approximately constant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School integration in the United States</span> Racial desegregation process

In the United States, school integration is the process of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and remains an issue in contemporary education. During the Civil Rights Movement school integration became a priority, but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.

This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.

References

  1. ↑ Caves, R. W. (2004). Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 175.
  2. ↑ "Blacks in the Korean War". U.S. Army. 2003. Archived from the original on 2007-07-16. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  3. 1 2 "Soldiers and Sailors Database". National Park Service, Department of the Interior. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  4. ↑ Aneja, Abhay; Xu, Guo (2020-12-02). "The Costs of Employment Segregation: Evidence from the Federal Government under Wilson".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. 1 2 Martin Blumenson, Eisenhower (Ballantine Books Inc.: New York, 1972) p. 127; Jonathan Jordan, American Warlords: How Roosevelt's High Command Led America to Victory in World War II, (Penguin 2015), 54-58, 143-45.
  6. ↑ Freeman, Greg (2003). Greg Freeman: A Gentleman, a Gentle Man : Selected Columns, St. Louis Post-dispatch. Virginia Publishing. ISBN   9781891442230.
  7. ↑ Antill, Peter (2003), Peleliu, battle for (Operation Stalemate II) - The Pacific War's Forgotten Battle, September–November 1944, "HITTING THE BEACH 3rd paragraph" Archived 2018-03-15 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ Thirty Fourth Naval Construction Battalion, Cmdr Lester M. Marx, Schwabacher Frey Company, San Francisco, CA, 1946
  9. ↑ 80th naval construction battalion, Bickford Engraving And Electrotype Co. 20 Matheewson Street, Providence, RI, 1946
  10. ↑ "Seabeemagazine online 2014/03/06". Archived from the original on 2018-05-19. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
  11. ↑ Taylor, Jon E. (2012). Freedom to serve : Truman, civil rights, and Executive Order 9981. New York: Routledge. ISBN   9780415895583.
  12. ↑ Ward, Jason (2011-11-21). Defending White Democracy : The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965. University of North Carolina Press. p. 100. ISBN   9780807835135.
  13. ↑ Gregory A. Freeman Troubled Water: Race, Mutiny, and Bravery on the USS Kitty Hawk Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY (2009) ISBN   9780230613614
  14. ↑ Webcast Interview Archived 2013-06-28 at the Wayback Machine by Gregory A. Freeman on Troubled Waters at the Pritzker Military Library on February 18, 2010
  15. ↑ Franklin, V. P. (2005). "Introduction: Brown v. Board of Education: Fifty Years of Educational Change in the United States". The Journal of African American History. 90 (1/2): 1–8. doi:10.1086/JAAHv90n1-2p1. ISSN   1548-1867. JSTOR   20063972. S2CID   140451875.
  16. ↑ Jonathan Kozol, "Segregation and Its Calamitous Effects: America's 'Apartheid' Schools" Archived 2007-02-02 at the Wayback Machine , VUE (Voices in Urban Education), Number 10, Winter 2006, Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Brown University.
  17. ↑ Jonathan Kozol, "Overcoming Apartheid", The Nation , December 19, 2005. p. 26
  18. ↑ "1960 Year In Review: Schools Desegregate". United Press International. 1960. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  19. ↑ Schafer, Mark (March 2004). "A Troubled Dream: The Promise and Failure of School Desegregation in Louisiana (review)". Social Forces . 82 (3): 1242–1244. doi:10.1353/sof.2004.0053. S2CID   201738276.
  20. ↑ "Back to School for Integration: The Catch-22 of Excellence and Diversity Without Race" Archived 2006-08-21 at the Wayback Machine , AsianWeek
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