Anaya Nolan
The push for desegregation in the United States has a long history, with the American Civil Rights Movement focusing on the desegregation of the military and the education system. In 1948, President Harry Truman issued an executive order to integrate the armed forces, and in 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Despite these advances, the implementation of desegregation has been slow and met with resistance, and the debate continues today about how to achieve equal educational opportunities for all students, regardless of race.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| First legislation providing rights to African Americans | The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, also known as the Reconstruction Amendments, passed between 1865 and 1870 |
| Landmark case outlawing segregation in schools | Brown v. Board of Education (1954) |
| First step toward a desegregated US military | General Dwight D. Eisenhower allowing African American soldiers to join White military units during World War II |
| Executive order to integrate the armed forces | Issued by President Harry Truman in 1948 |
| US Army's formal announcement of plans to desegregate | July 26, 1951 |
| First public college in the former Confederacy to integrate its student body | University of Louisiana at Lafayette (then known as Southwest Louisiana Institute) in July 1954 |
| First historically white public institution in the former Confederacy to admit a Black undergraduate | Virginia Polytechnic Institute (now Virginia Tech) in 1953 |
| Landmark case invalidating laws prohibiting interracial marriage | Loving v. Virginia (1967) |
| Supreme Court ruling on busing for desegregation | Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971) |
| Supreme Court ruling on avoiding desegregation by creating white "splinter districts" | Wright v. Council of the City of Emporia; United States v. Scotland Neck City Board of Education (1972) |
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What You'll Learn
The US military
On July 26, 1948, US President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which banned segregation in the Armed Forces. The order mandated "equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin."
Executive Order 9981 established the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, later changed to "Services", to recommend revisions to military regulations to implement desegregation. The committee examined the rules, practices, and procedures of the armed services and advised the Secretary of Defense, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force on ways to make desegregation a reality.
Despite the executive order, there was resistance to desegregation within the military. The Army, in particular, was reluctant to enact the order, feeling that integration of units would lead to a decline in national security. By March 1950, the Army agreed to integration across the entire service, but the last segregated army units were not dissolved until 1954. The Air Force was the first branch of the military to fully integrate, with the number of integrated units doubling between June and August 1949.
While Executive Order 9981 was a crucial step towards desegregation in the US military, the work of achieving true equality and diversity in the armed forces continues. In 2023, 75 years after Truman's order, the Department of Defense (DOD) expressed its commitment to promoting an environment free from discrimination. However, the military still faces challenges in meeting the goals of Truman's executive order, with issues of discrimination and harassment persisting in military academies and other areas of the military.
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Education
In the United States, school integration, also known as desegregation, is the process of ending race-based segregation in public and private schools. Since the 1930s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has been fighting for the desegregation of public education. In 1940, the NAACP won a lawsuit in Norfolk, which forced the city to pay Black and white teachers equally.
In 1954, the NAACP's efforts led to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, which declared that segregation in schools was unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment. This case was a massive blow to segregationist laws and policies in the United States, and it mandated the desegregation of public schools. Despite this ruling, many segregated schools remained, and the integration process was slow and painful for many students, teachers, and parents.
In the years following the Brown v. Board decision, the NAACP continued to fight for the integration of schools, particularly in Southern states like Virginia, where resistance to desegregation was fierce. It wasn't until 1959 that Virginia began to desegregate its schools, and even then, the process was slow and met with opposition. By 1965, fewer than 12,000 of Virginia's 235,000 Black students attended integrated schools.
The struggle for school integration continued in the following decades, with court cases and legislation seeking to uphold and enforce the principles of Brown v. Board. In 1971, the Court approved busing and other measures to address residential segregation that contributed to segregated schools. In 1972, the Court prohibited sex discrimination in educational programs receiving federal financial assistance. Despite these efforts, de facto segregation in schools has persisted, and in some cases, increased.
Today, the debate continues about how to close the achievement gap between minority and white students and ensure equal educational opportunities for all. While legal barriers to segregation have been broken, achieving true equality in education remains a challenge.
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Housing
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was a significant step towards addressing housing discrimination. It prohibited discrimination in housing based on race, colour, religion, sex, and national origin. The Act made it illegal to refuse to sell or rent property, or provide different information about housing availability, based on these protected characteristics. It also addressed specific discriminatory practices such as blockbusting and redlining. Despite the Act, housing discrimination still persists, and segregation patterns had already been firmly established.
In 1988, the Fair Housing Amendment Act expanded the protected classes to include disability and familial status. This was further codified by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. However, housing discrimination based on sexual orientation was not explicitly included in the Fair Housing Act, and as of 2007, it was only banned in 17 states. Same-sex couples continue to face challenges in accessing public housing as a family unit.
While the Fair Housing Act was a crucial step towards equality, it did not undo the wealth disparities caused by segregation. African Americans were historically excluded from buying homes in certain neighbourhoods, and as a result, they were unable to gain equity appreciation over time. This has contributed to ongoing wealth, educational, and health disparities.
To promote integration and address housing inequality, various solutions have been proposed, such as providing vouchers to low-income families to move into low-poverty areas and constructing affordable housing developments in advantaged communities. However, these efforts have had mixed results, and housing discrimination remains a challenge to enforce due to its often invisible nature.
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Marriage
In the United States, the first anti-miscegenation laws were enacted in the colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the 1660s. These laws initially pertained to marriages between whites and black or mulatto enslaved people and indentured servants. In 1664, Maryland criminalized marriages between whites and blacks, and in 1691, the Virginian House of Burgesses passed a similar law, followed by Maryland in 1692. These laws also spread to other colonies, such as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and later to territories and states that outlawed slavery.
The motivation behind these laws was complex. Some argue that economic exploitation, rather than a dislike of interracial sex, was the primary driver. Others suggest that these laws were a way to maintain racial hierarchies and prevent alliances between oppressed groups. The laws had severe consequences, including the enslavement of white women who married Black men and the sale of children of mixed heritage into slavery.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, anti-miscegenation laws continued to evolve. Several administrative acts in the 1720s and 1770s forbade interracial marriages in colonies, and under King Louis XVI, a decree forbade marriages between whites and people of color in the Kingdom. While France never had a racial law about marriage, this decree carried significant weight. In the United States, anti-miscegenation amendments were proposed in Congress multiple times, but a nationwide law against mixed-race marriages was never enacted.
The 20th century saw a continuation and expansion of anti-miscegenation laws, with states like Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Maryland enacting bans on marriages between people of different races. These laws also targeted Asian Americans, with the Cable Act stripping the citizenship of any U.S. citizen who married an "alien ineligible for citizenship," which primarily affected Asian Americans. In Nazi Germany, anti-miscegenation laws were passed as part of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, and similar laws were enforced in German colonies and South Africa.
It wasn't until the mid-20th century that these laws began to be challenged and repealed. In 1948, the California Supreme Court's ruling in Perez v. Sharp struck down California's ban on interracial marriage. In 1958, an interracial couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, married in Washington, D.C., to evade Virginia's anti-miscegenation law. After being arrested and sentenced, they appealed, and in 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. This landmark ruling led to the repeal of remaining state anti-miscegenation laws, with Alabama being the last state to repeal its laws against interracial marriage in 2000.
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Public accommodations
In the United States, the desegregation of public accommodations has been a long and arduous process, with many legal battles fought to end segregation and racial discrimination in these spaces. One of the earliest legal victories for desegregation came in 1868, when Iowa became the first state to desegregate schools by court order in Clark v. Board of School Directors. However, despite this early progress, discriminatory practices against African Americans persisted and were even codified into law through the Jim Crow laws, which mandated racial segregation in various aspects of public life, including transportation, education, and public accommodations.
It wasn't until the mid-20th century that significant strides were made towards desegregating public accommodations nationwide. The Civil Rights Movement, which gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s, played a pivotal role in this regard. The movement's efforts culminated in the passage of several landmark pieces of legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. These laws, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, were intended to end segregation and discriminatory voting practices, ensuring equal access to public accommodations and housing regardless of race.
One of the most significant legal victories during this period was the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). This ruling overturned racial segregation laws for public schools that had been in place since the late 19th century, declaring that separate but equal schools were "inherently unequal". The decision affirmed the principles of equality and justice and called for the desegregation of all schools across the nation. The Brown v. Board case was tied to the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship and equal protection under the law, and set a crucial precedent for challenging segregation in other spheres of public life.
In addition to the Brown v. Board case, there have been several other legal milestones in the fight for desegregated public accommodations. For example, in 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education that federal courts could use busing as a tool to achieve further integration in schools. Furthermore, in 1967, the landmark case of Loving v. Virginia invalidated all laws prohibiting interracial marriage, further advancing the cause of racial equality in the personal lives of Americans.
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Frequently asked questions
The first legislation providing rights to African Americans was the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, also known as the Reconstruction Amendments, passed between 1865 and 1870.
In late 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower allowed African American soldiers to join White military units in combat for the first time, taking the first step towards a desegregated US military.
The Brown v. Board of Education case was a landmark case in 1954 that ruled racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 were passed to end discriminatory voting practices and segregation in public accommodations and housing.
