From The National Parks Service:
From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation
through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From
Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too)
could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race.
The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners
and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated.
Here is a sample of laws from various states:
- Nurses: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in
wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which Negro men are placed.
(Alabama)
- Buses: All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation
company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for
white and colored races. (Alabama)
- Railroads: The conductor of each passenger train is authorized and required to
assign each passenger to the car or the division of the car, when it is divided by a
partition, designated for the race to which such passenger belongs. (Alabama)
- Restaurants: It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the
serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same
room, unless such white and colored persons are effectively separated by a solid
partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and
unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.
- Pool and Billiard Rooms: It shall be unlawful for a Negro and white person to play
together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards. (Alabama)
- Toilet Facilities, Male: Every employer of white or Negro males shall provide for such
white or Negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities. (Alabama)
- Intermarriage: The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a Negro,
Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void. (Arizona)
- Intermarriage: All marriages between a white person and a Negro person or
between a white person and a person of Negro descent to the fourth generation
inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited. (Florida)
- Cohabitation: Any Negro man and white women, or any white man and Negro
woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in
the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding
twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars. (Florida)
- Education: The schools for white children and the schools for Negro children shall
be conducted separately. (Florida)
- Juvenile Delinquents: There shall be separate buildings, not nearer than one fourth
mile from each other, one for white boys and one for Negro boys. White boys and
Negro boys shall not, in any manner, be associated together or worked together.
(Florida)
- Mental Hospitals: The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments
are arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white persons be
together. (Georgia)
- Intermarriage: It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a
white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void. (Georgia)
- Barbers: No colored barber shall serve as a barber [to] white women or girls.
(Georgia)
- Burial: The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored
persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons. (Georgia)
- Restaurants: All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white
people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within
the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license. (Georgia)
- Amateur Baseball: IT shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play
baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground
devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball
team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any
playground devoted to the white race. (Georgia)
- Parks: It shall be unlawful for colored people to frequent any park owned or
maintained by the city for the benefit, use and enjoyment of white persons. and
unlawful for nay white person to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for
the use and benefit of colored persons. (Georgia)
- Wine and Beer: Any person licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or
wine. shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall
not serve to the two races within the same room at any time. (Georgia)
- Reform Schools: The children of white and colored races committed to the houses
of reform shall be kept entirely separate from each other. (Kentucky)
- Circus Tickets: All circuses, shows and tent exhibitions, to which the attendance
of.more than one race is invited or expected to attend shall provide for the
convenience of its patrons not less than two ticket offices with individual sellers, and not
less than two entrances to the said performance, with individual ticket takers and
receivers, and in the case of outside or tent performances, the said ticket offices shall
not be less than twenty-five feet (25) apart. (Louisiana)
- Housing: Any person. who shall rent any part of any such building to a Negro
person or a Negro family when such building is already in whole or in part in occupancy
by a white person or white family, or vice versa when the building is in occupancy by a
Negro person or Negro family, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on convictions
thereof shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five ($25) nor more than one
hundred ($100.00) dollars or be imprisoned not less than 10, or more than 60 days, or
both such fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court. (Louisiana)
- The Blind: The board of trustees shall. maintain a separate building. on separate
ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the
colored or black race. (Louisiana)
- Intermarriage: All marriages between a white person and a Negro, or between a
white person and a person of Negro descent, to the third generation, inclusive, or
between a white person and a member of the Malay race; or between a person of Negro
descent to the third Generation, inclusive, and a member of the Malay race, are forever
prohibited, and shall be void. (Maryland)
- Education: Separate schools shall be maintained for the children of the white and
colored races. (Mississippi)
- Promotion of Equality: Any person. who shall be guilty of printing, publishing or
circulating printed, typewritten or written matter urging or presenting for public
acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality
or of intermarriage between whites and Negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and
subject to fine or imprisonment not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars or
imprisonment not exceeding six (6) months or both. (Mississippi)
Intermarriage: The marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto, or person who
shall have one-eight or more of Negro blood shall be unlawful and void. (Mississippi)
- Hospital Entrances: There shall be maintained by the governing authorities of every
hospital maintained by the state for the treatment of white and colored patients
separate entrances for white and colored patients and visitors, and such entrances shall
be used by the race only for which they are prepared. (Mississippi)
- Prisons: The warden shall see that the white convicts shall have separate
apartments for both eating and sleeping from the Negro convicts. (Mississippi)
- Education: Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children
of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white
school, or any white child to attend a colored school. (Missouri)
- Intermarriage: All marriages between . white persons and Negroes or white
persons and Mongolians... are prohibited and declared absolutely void... . No person
having one-eighth part or more of Negro blood shall be permitted to marry any white
person, nor shall any white person be permitted to marry any Negro or person having
one-eighth part or more of Negro blood. (Missouri)
- Education: Separate rooms [shall] be provided for the teaching of pupils of African
descent, and [when] said rooms are so provided, such pupils may not be admitted to
the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian or other descent. (New
Mexico)
- Textbooks: Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored
schools, but shall be continued to be used by the race first using them. (North Carolina)
- Libraries: The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for
the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading
books or periodicals. (North Carolina)
- Militia: The white and colored militia shall be separately enrolled, and shall never be
compelled to serve in the same organization. The organization of colored troops shall
not be permitted where white troops are available, and colored troops shall be under the
command of white officers. (North Carolina)
- Transportation: The. Utilities Commission. is empowered and directed to require
the establishment of separate waiting rooms at all stations for the white and colored
races. (North Carolina)
- Teaching: Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where
members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for
instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall
be fined in any sum not less than ten dollars ($10.00) not more than fifty dollars
($50.00) for each offense. (Oklahoma)
- Fishing, Boating, Bathing: The Conservation Commission shall have the right to
make segregation of the white and colored races as to the exercise of rights of fishing,
boating and bathing. (Oklahoma)
- Mining: The baths and lockers for the Negroes shall be separate from the white
race, but may be in the same building. (Oklahoma)
- Telephone Booths: The Corporation Commission is hereby vested with power and
authority to require telephone companies.. to maintain separate booths for white and
colored patrons when there is a demand for such separate booths. That the Corporation
Commission shall determine the necessity for said separate booths only upon complaint
of the people in the town and vicinity to be served after due hearing as now provided by
law in other complains filed with the Corporation Commission. (Oklahoma)
- Lunch Counters: No persons, firms, or corporations, who or which furnish meals to
passengers at station restaurants or station eating houses, in times limited by common
carriers of said passengers, shall furnish said meals to white and colored passengers in
the same room, or at the same table , or at the same counter. (South Carolina)
- Child Custody: It shall be unlawful for any parent, relative, or other white person in
this State, having the control or custody of any white child, by right or guardianship,
natural or acquired, or otherwise, to dispose of, give or surrender such white child
permanently into the custody, control, maintenance, or support of a Negro. (South
Carolina)
- Libraries: Any white person of such county may use the county free libraries under
the rules and regulations prescribed by the commissioners court and may be entitled to
all the privileges thereof. Said court shall make proper provision for the Negroes of said
county to be served through a separate branch or branches of the county free library,
which shall be administered by a custodian of the Negro race under the supervision of
the county librarian. (Texas)
- Education: The County Board of Education shall provide schools of two kinds: those
for white children and those for colored children. (Texas)
- Theaters: Every person. operating. any public hall, theater, opera house, motion
picture show or any place of public entertainment or public assemblage which is
attended by both white and colored persons shall separate the white and colored race
and shall set apart and designate. certain seats therein to be occupied by white
persons and a portion thereof, or certain seats therein, to be occupied by colored
persons. (Virginia)
- Railroads: The conductors or managers on all such railroads shall have power, and
are hereby required, to assign to each white or colored passenger his or her respective
car, coach, or compartment. If the passenger fails to disclose his race, the conductor
and managers, acting in good faith shall be the sole judges of his race. (Virginia)
- Intermarriage: All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians,
or Malaya hereafter contracted in the state of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void.
(Wyoming)