Why did segregation take place?

Answer 1

Racial segregation is probably as old as humankind, and is to be found even today in many countries other than the United States. It's very difficult to answer the "why" of it, but I believe that some of it goes to fear of anyone who is "different" from "us." Racial segregation and race hatred has always been a "them" vs "us" thing, based on fear. That which we fear, we tend to hate. I personally believe that most of the trouble can be traced to the amygdala, sometimes called the "lizard brain," two lobes of the brain that sit atop the spinal cord near the bottom of the brain stem - a portion of the brain that originally developed in early reptiles and was pretty much all the brain they had. The amygdala controls, among other things, the fully automatic "flight or fight" response to real or perceived danger. I believe the "lizard brain" is responsible for many of the ills of humanity, but unfortunately we are all born with the thing and nobody knows how to, for lack of a better term, "fix it." Suffice to say that time and again we see how thin the veneer of civilization is when the "lizard brain" come to the fore.

Prior to the Civil War (1861-1865), racial segregation in the United States was common in the northern, non-slaveholding states. The black "freedmen" in the north were expected to "keep to their place," which was decidedly third class. But at least the black people in the north were free people. They might work at the most menial jobs, but they were paid (not usually well) for their labors and were more or less free to come and go as they pleased. The worst thing they could do was attempt "race mixing" or miscegenation (sexual contact between blacks and whites), and it was very rare in the 19th Century because it was so dangerous.

In the South, slaves and masters lived in a kind of peculiar symbiosis. There was not supposed to be racial mixing, but it's well known that, especially white males used their domination of black female slaves to get sexual favors, and not infrequent pregnancies resulted in mixed-breed children. The children of such "relationships," if we may call them that, were duly registered as slaves of the master. Even if they were only one quarter or one eighth African, they were still "black," or "colored," and still slaves. But still the "peculiar institution" of slavery muddled along until the Civil War.

The Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, by Abraham Lincoln, was a Presidential Proclamation not voted on or approved by the congress, and it was attacked in many quarters as being toothless in that it only freed slaves in areas not actually controlled by the Federal Union. But it sounded the death knell of slavery. Then, once the Civil War was won by the north, there remained the conundrum: what should the relationship be between whites and blacks in a nation which had once held black people in bondage?

The north pretty much continued as it had, which meant essentially ignoring the black populace, but Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and in 1870 the 15th Amendment to the Constitution provided black people with the right to vote throughout the nation.

The north accepted this with a certain equanimity and as time went on, even though black people in the north were still kept more or less separate and there was unquestionably racial prejudice, the divide in the north was nowhere near what happened in the south.

In the south, there was no question in the mind of the average white person that former slaves had to be "kept in their place," which translated meant pretty much what it had meant before emancipation. Black people were not to vote or hold office or own land and especially not mix sexually with whites! The white supremacist Ku Klux Klan appeared on the scene to terrorize blacks, killing blacks who attempted to vote or attend school. In the former slave states, laws were enacted which outlawed slavery but which were quickly replaced by other measures, called "Jim Crow" laws, which made black people legally second class citizens, legally denying them the right to vote, hold office, buy land, go to school, drink from a drinking fountain or use a public restroom reserved for whites. Black people in the south more or less quietly put up with this situation for the better part of a century. They didn't really see what else they could do. Like everyone else, they were just trying to survive in a harsh world.

One wonders what might have been different had Abraham Lincoln not been assassinated. Lincoln started his presidency being as much a racist as any other typical white person in this country of the period. Lincoln, early in his presidency, did not believe that the black and white races could get along once slavery was ended, and actually favored deporting black people back to Africa "where they belonged." But if you study Lincoln's steady evolution through the Civil War (and it's what makes Lincoln one of our greatest presidents), it seems clear that by 1865 he was a very changed man in his attitude toward people of color. Had he lived, the process of reconstruction of the nation should have gone much more smoothly and with less hatred and violence, and the lot of black people might - I say might - have been different. Lincoln had completely abandoned the idea of deportation, recognizing, as the abolitionists had, that the black people in America were no longer Africans but Americans, and as such must needs be integrated into American society as quickly as possible. But it was not to be. Not for a very long time.

Not until December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, a tiny, timid black domestic worker and seamstress got on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She'd had a long day and her feet hurt. She was sitting in what was supposed to be the "black section," but when more white riders got on the bus, the driver moved the sign signifying where the "black section" was and ordered four blacks to move or stand so the whites could sit. Rosa Parks refused to obey the legal order to give up her seat. Something just snapped, she recalled, and she'd had enough. She was arrested, which triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which launched the entire Civil Rights Movement, which theoretically ended with the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 supported by President Lyndon Johnson.

By 1968 the Supreme Court had ruled that all forms of segregation were unconstitutional. By the 1970s, most opposition to legal segregation had disappeared, and segregation and racial discrimination was declared illegal in schools, businesses, the American military and government.

Today we like to think of racial segregation as a thing of the past in this country, but the fact is that it still goes on, and in fact there is some racial segregation reappearing in schools, some as a result of "white flight" to the suburbs, leaving the inner city schools predominately black. Prejudice is a hard beast to kill, and that lizard brain keeps rising up and causing trouble when you least expect it. But there is no question that progress has been made, and more progress will be made, and I think we have largely reached a time when Martin Luther King's dream that his "… four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

No one bats an eyelash any more when (irrespective of your politics or what you think of their performance) two Secretaries of State, back to back, are black, and one a woman besides. And one of the front runners right now in the Democratic race for the Presidency is a black man with a funny name and a huge ability to raise funds from the grass roots. For the first time in history, a black man seems, at least for the moment, to have a serious shot at the Presidency, something absolutely unimaginable when I was a child. This is real progress, and I for one hope that it just gets better and better. This America of ours is not perfect. We as a people are not perfect. Humans aren't perfect, and never will be. But we have shown by our actions that we can and will change. As the Youngbloods sang many years ago, "C'mon people now, Smile on your brother, Ev'rybody get together, Try and love one another right now." Segregation started because of how someone looked because orf their language race or color. It was terrible !!!!!

Answer 2

For more than 200 years before the Civil War, slavery existed in the United States. But after the war things began to get worse for blacks. The south thought they needed to do something. The Southern legislatures, former confederates, passed laws known as the black codes, after the war, which severely limited the rights of blacks and segregated them from whites

Answer 3

Because lots of the European people believed that anyone different than them was inhuman. So they separated themselves from the blacks because they thought that the black people were animals and had no feelings.

Answer 4

Segregation was formed mainly because of the fear of the people of that time. They still felt that blacks were too different than whites, and could not function in the same setting. They also feared the stereotypical black male and the possibility of getting cooties, and the only way to be safe was to keep them away. This is what THEY thought at the time.

Answer 5

From the very moment man stepped out of the cave he began to separate himself from other people he considered to be different from him. At the same time slavery began, so these things have always been part of the history of man.

Answer 6

because people did not understand the different races and didn't understand why everyone wasn't the same race. for that people were afraid. which started the separation of the races.

Answer 7

Racial segregation has been around for thousands of years. For example, the Egyptians segregated themselves from the Israelites.