Race Segregation

Report Outline
Postwar Changes in Segregation Pattern
Retreat of Separateness in Education
Effects of Rise in Negro's Economic Status
Differences on Anti-Segregation Strategy

Postwar Changes in Segregation Pattern

Segregation of the Negro in the United States is falling away today at a faster rate than at any time since the American pattern of race separation came into being. The change to date has been evolutionary, not revolutionary, in character; it stands as the result of a gradual erosion or chipping away of long-standing barriers to contacts between the races. While the attack on “Jim Crow” has been strongly pressed by Negro organizations, the retreat of segregation appears to be due in the main to postwar social and economic changes, and particularly to the rapid rise in the status of the American Negro.

Legal action has been the principal weapon of Negro organizations in their fight on segregation. Walter White, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has noted postwar progress toward racial equality “in at least 15 different areas”. He cites 19 recent decisions of the U. S. Supreme Court, ten of which have cut ground from under segregation or disfranchisement of the colored minority. However, the Court has not yet overthrown its 1896 decision (in Plessy v. Ferguson) sanctioning separate treatment of the two races if the treatment in question is equal.

Postwar Changes in Pattern of Segregation

Breaches in the color line have taken different forms in different parts of the country. Interracial housing, schooling, and transportation now exist in sections where only a few years ago segregation seemed firmly established. However, there are other sections and other areas of community life in which there has been little change.