In the fall of 1865, white southerners, most of them ex-Confederates and planters, won large majorities in local and state elections throughout the South. They quickly passed a series of restrictive laws, or Black Codes, which varied only slightly…

Two photographs from 1941 show the glaring contrast between so-called "separate but equal" schools in Greene County, Georgia. In this photograph, black students must make do with antiquated, ramshackle facilities and, according to the original…

The United States passed more than four-hundred laws, amendments, and ordinances legalizing discrimination and segregation between the years of 1865 and 1967. Nearly all aspects of people's everyday lives were governed by these laws including, but…

From the 1880s to the mid 1960s, many states passed laws requiring the segregation [separation] of white and "colored" [African American] people. (African Americans were also referred to as Negroes at that time.) These laws ruled nearly all aspects…

Chicago's School Board insisted that its overcrowded schools were not segregated and that there was no pattern of discrimination against black students. Activists in the 1950s and 1960s produced numerous reports that proved otherwise, documenting…

Seattle's black population was segregated into the area known as the Central District through both de jure and de facto methods. Restrictive racial covenants written into housing deeds prevented blacks, Asians, Jews, and Native Americans from being…

This activity introduces students to the term Jim Crow and the concept of legally mandated racial segregation.