Desegregation in the United States facts for kids
Desegregation is when people from different groups, usually different races, stop being kept separate. It's about bringing people together. This idea is often talked about in the United States.
Desegregation was a big goal of the American civil rights movement. This movement worked to end unfair treatment and separation of people based on their race. A very important moment was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which helped end segregation in schools.
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US Military History
The military has a long history with desegregation.
Early Days of the Military
Starting in the 1600s, during conflicts like King Philip's War, Black and White people served together in the North American colonies. They fought side-by-side in every American war until the war of 1812. After that, Black people didn't fight in mixed units again until the Korean War.
In the American Revolutionary War, thousands of Black men fought for the colonists. Many joined the new Continental Navy. We don't know all their names or how many there were because records weren't kept well.
During the American Civil War, many Black people joined the Union Army and Navy. Most were enslaved African Americans who had escaped from the South. More than 180,000 Black people served in segregated units called the United States Colored Troops. These units had White officers. Their names are recorded by the National Park Service. About 18,000 Black people also joined the Union Navy as sailors.
World Wars I and II
In World War I, only a few Black people became officers. The NAACP tried to get more Black officers commissioned. When President Woodrow Wilson took office, he officially separated the U.S. Navy by race for the first time.
During World War II, most officers were White. Many Black troops worked as truck drivers or stevedores (people who load and unload ships). The Red Ball Express, which delivered supplies to Allied forces in France after D-Day, was run almost entirely by African American truck drivers.
In late 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, General Dwight D. Eisenhower needed more soldiers. He decided to let African American soldiers join White military units to fight in combat. This was the first step toward ending segregation in the U.S. military. Eisenhower's decision was strongly opposed by his army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith.
For more about Black service members in these wars, you can learn about the Tuskegee Airmen (in the Air Corps) and the 761st Tank Battalion (United States) (in the Army).
In World War II, the U.S. Navy began to try out integration on ships like USS Mason. This ship had Black crew members and White officers. Its goal was to let Black sailors work in all kinds of jobs, not just as stewards or mess men. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt pushed the Navy to train Black sailors for more roles.
The Seabees, a construction branch of the Navy, also saw changes. In 1942, the Navy started enlisting African Americans in the Seabees. These men were put into separate units, like the 34th and 80th Naval Construction Battalions. These units had White officers and Black enlisted men. By the end of the war, many of these special construction battalions became the first fully integrated units in the U.S. Navy. However, all these units were shut down after the war.
Modern Military History
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981. This order officially ended segregation in the armed forces after World War II. It was a big step for civil rights. Truman used an executive order to do this, which meant he didn't need Congress's approval. This was important because many White Democrats in the South would have blocked such a law.
US Housing Laws
For a long time in the United States, it was legal to separate people and treat them unfairly in housing based on their race. This changed with the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
The Fair Housing Act ended discrimination in selling, renting, and financing homes based on race, color, religion, or national origin. This was the first law against housing discrimination. It was meant to follow the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but it didn't have enough support in Congress at first.
The bill finally passed after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, and the riots that followed. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law on April 11, 1968. He called it a promise that "fair housing for all" was now part of the American way of life. Since then, the law has been updated to include sex, family status, and disability. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity helps enforce this law.
US Education System
In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education that schools could use forced busing to achieve racial desegregation. This meant students might be bused to different schools to create more mixed classrooms. However, court-ordered school desegregation efforts have become less common over time.
Many jobs moved from northern cities to suburbs, the South, and overseas. This led to more people of all races moving to suburbs. The poorest Black people and other minorities were often left behind in the inner cities of the Northeast and Midwest. Some experts, like Jonathan Kozol, say that in the early 2000s, U.S. schools became as separated as they were in the late 1960s.
The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found that desegregation in U.S. public schools was highest in 1988. By 2005, the number of Black students in schools with a White majority was lower than any year since 1968.
Some people argued that forced desegregation wasn't needed or didn't work. Many middle-class and wealthy White families moved from cities to suburbs. This was partly to avoid integrated school systems. It was also due to jobs moving to suburbs and new highways being built.
Some White parents in Louisiana said they were afraid to drop off their children at desegregated schools because of crowds.
Sociologist David Armor wrote in his 1995 book Forced Justice that efforts to change the racial makeup of schools didn't greatly improve academic success for minority students. Other researchers, Carl L. Bankston and Stephen J. Caldas, argued that ongoing racial inequality in society made it hard for schools to desegregate. They said that school success was often linked to a school's class and racial makeup. This meant that parents, even without prejudice, looked for neighborhoods with good schools, which often meant middle-class or better areas. So, court-ordered desegregation often led to schools having too few White students for effective mixing. White students often left for mostly White suburban districts or private schools.
Asian Americans and Desegregation
As American society became more diverse, new issues arose with school and ethnic groups. In a 1994 court case, Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, parents of Chinese American students said that a desegregation plan was unfair. This plan didn't allow any school to have more than 50% of any one ethnic group.
The rule was first made to help integrate Black students. But it negatively affected Chinese American students, who had become the largest ethnic group in the district. For example, Lowell High School (San Francisco) in San Francisco, California, had to set much higher academic standards for Chinese American students to get in. This was because they were close to half the student population.
The newspaper AsianWeek reported on the Chinese American parents' challenge. However, a civil rights group called Chinese for Affirmative Action supported the school district. They argued that these standards were not harmful to Chinese Americans and were needed to prevent schools from becoming segregated again. In 2006, Chinese parents continued to protest against school assignments based on race.
Images for kids
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"17th Special" Seabees with the 7th Marines on Peleliu made national news in an official U.S.Navy press release. NARA-532537
See also
In Spanish: Desegregación para niños
