Beginning after Reconstruction, and working well into the 1960s, segregation in the South created an environment that restricted the rights of blacks.  This occurred in the everyday political, economic, and social spheres of life.  Racism and segregation operated in a way that made every aspect of black life harsher in the South.

     Segregation fueled a racist culture that demeaned blacks and made them seem inferior.  In Sarah Patton Boyles A Desegregated Heart, she captures this when saying, I learned that equality relations with Negroes were WRONG (Boyle, 30).  She goes on later to explain that I expected negroes to recognize me as quality[and] this game me a smug feeling around them (36).  This basis of an inferior treatment of blacks fueled in many ways the policies of segregation.

       Even after the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment granted equal protection and suffrage, blacks often found themselves without fundamental political rights and very often disenfranchised.  Jim Crow Laws, Grandfather Clauses, and poll taxes all sought to prevent blacks from voting through law, and where that did not work blacks would usually face intimidation and lynching.  This successfully disenfranchised 80% of the black population (The Eisenhower Era).  Furthermore, when numerous polls were set up for blacks, yet the largest number of votes came from polling places out in the country where voters were not openly intimidated by the cops (Moody, 342).  Unfortunately, it did not stop with disenfranchisement.

Throughout the era, many prevented blacks from speaking their minds and organizing.  The NAACP would often organize to fight against such acts, but sometimes simply organizing would be difficult.  In Ann Moodys autobiographical Coming of Age in Mississippi, she speaks of Samuel OQuinn, who was going to organize a secret NAACP meeting, but [b]efore he was able to organize his first meeting, he was killed.  (Moody, 184).  Such racial injustice was commonplace.  After his murder, Anne is flooded with memories of all the other killings, beatings, and abuses inflicted upon Negroes by whites, to which she had witnessed (187).  Lynching ravaged the South, and within less than 80 years, over 3,400 occurrences of lynching took place (Lynching by Year and Race).

     Economically, blacks were very often disadvantaged.  Anne Moody describes in her book how there werent any factories or sawmills that employed unskilled Negro men.  (Moody, 112).  This was not unusual, as most southern cities refused to hire black workers, excluding them from being firefighters, police officers, and other city jobs.  Poverty was also common, as is seen when Anne Moody describes a lady [that] lived in a two-room house with her five children  [and how] she supported them and her sick father on the five dollars that she earned doing domestic work (330).  Even when a job was available, blacks were still discriminated.  The average black salary annually in 1950 was $1,869, whereas whites averaged $3,445, almost twice that of blacks (Historical Income Tables).  Even though there were many poor whites at the time, poverty was often only temporary, and they found more housing options that poor blacks (Orfield).

     Poverty also transferred itself in to black school systems.  Over 57% of black schools were in a state of high poverty (Orfield).  Out of the entire population of black students, over 28% lived in urban areas, opposed to a mere 3% of total white students (The Eisenhower Era).  This is a problem because 13% few urban students scored in the upper quartile on math tests when compared to those in areas that are more rural (The Eisenhower Era).  In addition, only 17% of poor urban teenagers could read, as opposed to well over 50% of poor suburban teens (The Eisenhower Era).  This was especially influential as the Cold War put a stronger emphasis on education, focusing on math and science, which were two rapidly expanding fields.  By greatly affecting the black youth, whites were able to ensure another generation of uneducated, or poorly educated, blacks, which further reaffirmed their belief of black inferiority. 

     Women, too, were victims of much discrimination.  Even amongst other women, they were subject to discrimination, shown when Sarah Patton Boyle becomes upset because A negro failed to call me Miss!  (Boyle, 40).  She later explains how Negro women are naturally lesser, as If a colored woman had an illegitimate child she did not drop in our estimation.  For this was typical.  (31).   Anne Moody later retells how A Negro high school girl, picking cotton after school out in the country, was raped by a white farmer (Moody, 324).  Unfortunately, she continues, the parents did not stop letting their children pick cotton, because the little money the teen-agers made kept them in school (324). 

     Such racist atrocities were common throughout the South.  Boyle reflects the mindset of many Southerners when saying, [he] took it for granted the fact that Negroes stole, were ignorant, lived in shacks, dressed in rags, and year-round ate corn pone and fat back.  (Boyle, 33).  This led to segregation in many aspects of Southern life, many of which were passed by state legislatures: a 1914 Louisiana statute required separate entrances at circuses for Blacks and Whites; a 1915 Oklahoma law segregated telephone booths; and a 1920 Mississippi law made it a crime to advocate or publish "arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between Whites and Negroes."  (March of the Titans).

     Segregation in the South sought to insure that blacks were and remained inferior.  They did this by affecting every aspect of life, using disenfranchisement, refusing to give blacks jobs, not giving black schools money, and treating blacks with disrespect and disdain.  Segregation was able to successfully operate by creating an atmosphere where blacks couldnt get jobs, vote, or speak out, and by fueling a racist society built on the belief of black inferiority,.

Works Cited

A.P. U.S. History Notes: Chapter 40: The Eisenhower Era (1952 1960).  1 April 2004. <http://www.hostultra.com/~apusnotes/History/Chapter40.doc>.

Boyle, Sarah Patton.  The Desegregated Heart: A Virginians Stand in a Time of Transition.  New York: William Morrow & Company, 1962.

Historical Income Tables Families. 2 April 2004. <http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~mtwomey/econhelp/201files/USMeanIncome.html>.

Lynching by Year and Race.  2 April 2004.  <http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html>.

MARCH OF THE TITANS -A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE: Chapter 54: Immigration and Eugenics - America Until 1945: Part Two: Blacks in America 1870 1945.  1 April 2004. <http://www.white-history.com/hwr54i.htm>.

Moody, Anne.  Coming of Age in Mississippi.  New York: Doubleday, 1968.

Orfield. "The Growth of Segregation".  1 April 2004. <http://www.d.umn.edu/~bmork/3901/Outline/3901Weekthirteen.htm>.