Integration - in U.S. history, the goal of an organized movement to break down the barriers of discrimination and segregation separating African Americans from the rest of American society. Racial segregation was peculiar neither to the American South nor to the United States (see apartheid).

Reconstruction to 1954

Segregation assumed its special form in the United States after the Southern states were defeated in the Civil War and slavery was abolished. Black codes that restricted the rights of the newly freed slaves were enacted in the South in 1865–66. These were abolished during Reconstruction, but after Reconstruction white dominance was thoroughly reestablished in the South, partly by the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan and other groups, but more by the persistence of social custom.

African Americans were prevented from voting by devices such as the poll tax and unfair literacy tests and by intimidation. They were denied any equal share in community life. Toward the end of the 19th cent. segregation laws—the Jim Crow laws—were enacted to codify white dominance. Blacks were forced to attend separate schools and colleges, to occupy special sections in railway cars and buses, and to use separate public facilities; they were forbidden to sit with whites in most places of public amusement. These laws were upheld as regards railroad facilities by the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the so-called separate but equal accommodation. The period 1900 to 1920 brought full extension of segregation to all public transportation and education facilities, even hospitals, churches, and jails.

The tide of opposition across the nation began to rise just before World War II and was given impetus by the activities of civil-rights organizations. African Americans, enjoying a somewhat improved economic status, were in the 1930s more assertive of their rights. General opinion may have been influenced by the paradox of a nation urging war for democracy overseas while at the same time tolerating discrimination at home.

In 1948, President Harry Truman issued a directive calling for an end to segregation in the armed forces. The Supreme Court had also begun to move away from the earlier opinions and toward a principle of racial equality. The court struck down state enforcement of restrictive covenants as well as racial barriers leading to unequal treatment in state professional schools and in interstate transportation. In these rulings, however, the court still ruled only on whether facilities provided for blacks and whites were equal, and not on whether the separation of the races itself was unconstitutional.

1954 to 1963

School Desegregation

In 1954, the Supreme Court took a momentous step: In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka the court set aside a Kansas statute permitting cities of more than 15,000 to maintain separate schools for blacks and whites and ruled instead that all segregation in public schools is "inherently unequal" and that all blacks barred from attending public schools with white pupils are denied equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The doctrine was extended to state-supported colleges and universities in 1956. Meanwhile, in 1955 the court implemented its 1954 opinion by declaring that the federal district courts would have jurisdiction over lawsuits to enforce the desegregation decision and asked that desegregation proceed "with all deliberate speed."

At the time of the 1954 decision, laws in 17 southern and border states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri) and the District of Columbia required that elementary schools be segregated. Four other states—Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, and Wyoming—had laws permitting segregated schools, but Wyoming had never exercised the option, and the problem was not important in the other three. Although discrimination existed in the other states of the Union, it was not sanctioned by law.

The struggle over desegregation now centered upon the school question. By the end of 1957 nine of the 17 states and the District of Columbia had begun integration of their school systems. Another five states had some integrated schools by 1961. The states mostly fell back on stopgap measures or on pupil-placement laws, which assigned students to schools ostensibly on nonracial grounds. Forced integration led to much violence. The most notable instance was the defiance in 1957 of federal orders by Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas, who called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent integration in Little Rock. President Eisenhower responded by sending federal troops to enforce the court order for integration.

In 1958 Virginia closed nine schools in four counties rather than have them integrated, but Virginia and federal courts ruled these moves illegal. In 1960 desegregation began in Louisiana; whites boycotted the integrated New Orleans public schools at first triumphantly, later with diminishing effectiveness. In 1961 two black students registered at the Univ. of Georgia but were suspended because of student disorders; they were later returned under a federal judge's order.

In 1962–63 violence erupted in Mississippi, precipitating a serious crisis in federal-state relations. Against the opposition of Gov. Ross R. Barnett, James H. Meredith, a black who was supported by federal court orders, registered at the Univ. of Mississippi in 1962. A mob gathered and attacked the force of several hundred federal marshals assigned to protect Meredith; two persons were killed. The next day federal troops occupied Oxford and restored order. Meredith became the first African American to attend a Mississippi public school with white students in accord with the 1954 court decision.

In 1963, South Carolina's Clemson College became the first integrated public school in that state. Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama stood in a doorway at the Univ. of Alabama in a symbolic attempt to block two black students from enrolling in 1963; the attempt failed. In the North attempts were also made to combat segregation. After a suit brought by black parents in 1960, the school system of New Rochelle, N.Y., was in 1961 ordered by a federal judge to be desegregated. Similar suits followed in other cities.

Public Transportation and Accommodations

The fight over education overshadowed efforts to achieve integration in other areas, but moves against segregation in public transportation did gain wide notice. In 1955–56, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led blacks in Montgomery, Ala., in a boycott against the municipal bus system after Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the segregated section of a bus. The boycott was brought to a successful conclusion when, on Nov. 13, 1956, the Supreme Court nullified the laws of Alabama and the ordinances of Montgomery that required segregation on buses.

Mixed groups of whites and blacks, called freedom riders, in May, 1961, undertook a campaign to force integration in bus terminals and challenge segregation in local interstate travel facilities. The buses were attacked by mobs in Anniston, Ala., where one bus was destroyed by a firebomb. There were riots in Birmingham and Montgomery when blacks attempted to use facilities previously reserved for whites; federal marshals and the National Guard were called out to restore order and escort the freedom riders to Mississippi. Many of them were arrested in Jackson, Miss., for infractions of the state's segregation laws, and a long series of court battles began. These protests led in 1961 to an Interstate Commerce Commission ban on segregation in all interstate transportation facilities.

Other Fields

Passive resistance was undertaken by groups to eradicate discrimination in other fields. In 1960 black college students staged a sit-in at segregated public lunch counters in an effort to force desegregation; similar demonstrations were made in other cities. Other campaigns were waged with some success for the desegregation of beaches, restaurants, theaters, and libraries. In 1957, New York City adopted the first law forbidding racial or religious discrimination in private rental housing. During the summer of 1963 thousands of blacks demonstrated in Birmingham, Ala., and were attacked by police using cattle prods and dogs. Nationwide revulsion to these attacks was expressed when over 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., and pressed for further civil-rights legislation.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act to the Present

An attempt to deal with the increasing demands of blacks for equal rights came in 1964 when President Lyndon Baines Johnson asked for and received the most comprehensive civil-rights act to date; the act specifically prohibited discrimination in voting, education, and the use of public facilities. For the first time since the Supreme Court ruled on segregation in public schools in 1954, the federal government had a means of enforcing desegregation; Title VI of the act barred the use of federal funds for segregated programs and schools. In 1964 only two southern states (Tennessee and Texas) had more than 2% of their black students enrolled in integrated schools. Because of Title VI, about 6% of the black students in the South were in integrated schools by the next year.

Early in 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, but it did not prevent the rising tide of militance among blacks; Watts, a black slum in Los Angeles, erupted in violence, leaving 34 dead. The next year was marked by riots in practically all major U.S. cities as blacks began shifting to an independent course expressed in the concept of black power; the term originated with Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student