Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Segregation laws were at the state and municpal level, so it depends where you are talking about. There aren't many blacks to segregate in the rural, upland South. Even today, there are very very few in the Ozarks and Appalachia.
I've worked in several restaurants, and even today, kitchen workers are more often black and front of house more often white, though I'm not sure why this is the case. This is not always the case though.
Born and raised in Ohio. During my time in the Marines I was stationed at Marine Corps Supply Center Albany GA. This was 1967. Vietnam War and many Marines, black and white were deployed to the combat zone. Albany was strictly segregated, no blacks to be seen at restaurants or hotels. I would frequent a bar on occasion with friends. The bar manager was the wife of a Marine. On several occasions, black Marines would attempt to come in. The bar manger would fly into a rage and scream at the black Marines, "we don't serve ******* get out".
In the 1950's we would visit my grandparents who lived in Jacksonville FL. They were for lack of better words what some people would call in that day white trash. Lived in the poorest section of Jacksonville. The streets were not paved and were just sand. They were virulent racists and had nothing but derogatory comments about black people.
I grew up in Auburn, Alabama. Left there in '63 when I graduated from high school.
There were no black students at the university. No black teachers.
Restaurants were segregated like everything else. There were no black people interfacing with white people at all. If blacks were employed by restaurants it was in the back and out of sight.
There were 3 restrooms - Men, Women, Colored - at public facilities, and always 2 drinking fountains.
Black people were not allowed in restaurants. Or movies.
The black high school used the public football field on Thursday nights. White high school on Friday night. We did not know each other and I never saw a black person at our games.
There were no black police officers. Black teachers taught at the black high school. White teachers at the white school.
Black people were not allowed in the public swimming pool.
A couple of my friends had maids. The maid was driven home after work, and she sat in the back seat while being driven.
Anyone who calls this a "problem" or claims that the situation has been overstated simply wasn't there in the late 50s/early 60s, or has some agenda.
I appreciate your honesty and candor regarding your own region of the country during that time period. (actually, slightly later; 61 -65)
I am from the North East originally, but my parents took us to Florida by car several times in the early 60s. We took our time, and stopped along the way.
The only place I saw black people was in the kitchen of "diner" type restarants. The servers were all white in every restaurant, as were the patrons.
With a car full of kids under ten, on the road for one thousand miles, we spent a good deal of time stopping at public restrooms. I remember the strange three restroom set up.
"Men" "Ladies" and "Coloreds" As children often are, I found myself profoundly disturbed by this. The "Colords" bathroom was always antiquated and filthy.
Once, in Florida I received a terrible sunburn. The luxury hotel recommended a local doctor.
When we arrived at his office there were two waiting rooms.
One "White" and the other "Colored". The white waiting room was tastefully decorated. I remember it had a tropical fish tank. The other "colored" waiting room had folding chairs and was full.
When we came in a nurse immediately greeted us saying "Dr. will see you now."
The black patients just waited.
When we left my mother remarked to my father "I'll bet that man treats those fish better than his Negro patients." In retrospect, I don't doubt it at all.
These were my memories of the Eastern South from the early through middle 60s.
msgsng, my father was a Marine during the Korean conflict and was stationed in South Carolina for a while. He has told me of the horrible way that black Marines were treated there.
I appreciate your honesty and candor regarding your own region of the country during that time period. (actually, slightly later; 61 -65)
I am from the North East originally, but my parents took us to Florida by car several times in the early 60s. We took our time, and stopped along the way.
The only place I saw black people was in the kitchen of "diner" type restarants. The servers were all white in every restaurant, as were the patrons.
With a car full of kids under ten, on the road for one thousand miles, we spent a good deal of time stopping at public restrooms. I remember the strange three restroom set up.
"Men" "Ladies" and "Coloreds" As children often are, I found myself profoundly disturbed by this. The "Colords" bathroom was always antiquated and filthy.
Once, in Florida I received a terrible sunburn. The luxury hotel recommended a local doctor.
When we arrived at his office there were two waiting rooms.
One "White" and the other "Colored". The white waiting room was tastefully decorated. I remember it had a tropical fish tank. The other "colored" waiting room had folding chairs and was full.
When we came in a nurse immediately greeted us saying "Dr. will see you now."
The black patients just waited.
When we left my mother remarked to my father "I'll bet that man treats those fish better than his Negro patients." In retrospect, I don't doubt it at all.
These were my memories of the Eastern South from the early through middle 60s.
msgsng, my father was a Marine during the Korean conflict and was stationed in South Carolina for a while. He has told me of the horrible way that black Marines were treated there.
What I find most disturbing about all of this is how non reconstructed Southerners think all of this was a good way to run a country. To this day I'll bet there are many there that want things to return to the 1950's.
The North was also not much better in some regards. In Philadelphia department stores in the 1940's blacks were not allowed on the sales floor and had to work in the back rooms. Movie theatres in Philly also made blacks sit in the balcony section. It wasn't just the South.
What I find most disturbing about all of this is how non reconstructed Southerners think all of this was a good way to run a country. To this day I'll bet there are many there that want things to return to the 1950's.............
I have not met one. Not a single one. That attitude is not tolerated where I go, and anyone who intimates such things is met by stoney stares by those too shy to do otherwise, and a nose to nose rebuke by those who are prone to speak out.
I have not met one. Not a single one. That attitude is not tolerated where I go, and anyone who intimates such things is met by stoney stares by those too shy to do otherwise, and a nose to nose rebuke by those who are prone to speak out.
Many of them talk the code created by Republican strategist Lee Atwater. So unless you know the code you wouldn't know you had met one.
Note I am using quotes from an interview Atwater gave to a politcal scientist. You can google the thing.
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "******, ******, ******." By 1968 you can't say "******" — that hurts
you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "******, ******."
Usually the ones that are the most outspoken about returning to these days without the racism are the Libertarian Republicans like Rand Paul and they let this slip by stating they want to do away with the anti-discrimination laws See these people state that the gov't desegregation was bad. That businesses that discriminated based on race would have gone out of business because the businesses that didn't discriminate would get all the customers. The other Republicans are just racist and want slavery back.
There were definitely areas of the country where blacks were not welcome. I grew up in the 50's and early 60's in the North and while there were some guidelines (white girls did not date black guys, and vice versa nor did we socialize with each other much ) I went to school with lots of blacks and had no issues with them personally.
In about 1979 we moved to Winston Salem NC and were setting up a new house there and a black contractor came to do some work on the place. We hit it off and I invited him to go to the Wake Forest football game with me and my Wife that week. He looked at me and said "You want US to go with YOU to the game ?" I told him I did, and we decided they would meet us at our house the night of the game so we could drive over together.
When we walked into the stadium you could feel the icy stares and see people turning around to look at us. Everyone at the game was dressed up as if they were going to church, and here were these two Northerners coming in with a black man and his Wife ! All during the game we felt like we were being watched and talked about.
The next morning my Wife called me at work to tell me our car wouldn't start so we had it towed to a shop where they found someone had sugared the tank. I guess we got our lesson on how things were done in the South even as late as 1979.
In the 1990's, Lawrence Otis Graham, a Harvard-educated lawyer who grew up in wealth, took a job undercover as a busboy at a segregated country club in Connecticut and wrote an article about it in New York Magazine. He also wrote a book called Our Kind of People, about the wealthy black elite in this country going back to just after the Civil War (his family is a part of that long-time wealthy black culture).
This was a pretty well-known story and caused some organizations to stop holding their events at segregated country clubs.
And I realize some posters on City-Data are pretty young, but folks, the 1990s was NOT that long ago.
As opposed to some posters, where I grew up graduated from HS in 1969 in NC
I remember early on that:
Yes blacks worked at segregated restaurants front and back
Yes, there were separate restrooms and water fountains.
Yes, black customers could not be served in the front but I don't know how it was any different going into a black restaurant for whites.
Whites and black kids knew each other and played together. We did go to separate churches and schools for the most part.
Blacks were mechanics, farmers, etc and whites and blacks did business with them and we lived as neighbors on the individual level.
But our communities were separate on the group level.
I remember seeing blacks shopping in the same stores as the whites but in the black communities there were black corner stores, black laundries, etc. (In the 1930s, I think blacks shopped on one day; mill hands shopped on another day, and townies shopped the rest of the week but that wasn't the case in the 1950s and 1960s)
It was sad with the limited expectations allowed the blacks for jobs and education. The highest status most powerful position in the black community was usually the reverend or maybe the school administration.
Then by the mid to late 1960s:
There were no more separate water fountains and restrooms
Schools and school buses were integrated. Most of the black schools were shut down a grade at a time and at least in my school it went better than it could have. We kids knew each other anyway black or white so it was no real problem. Although it probably was hard on the black kids coming into a new school and not sure what they would be facing. Any school change is hard as it is. But the adults white and black made it work.
My black classmates intended and were able to attend state universities as best I know.
There was white flight from the urban areas.
Some people put their children in private schools, at least for awhile.
The federal gov't and courts monitored voting, busing, etc for a long time.
But that is more like what I saw. I know each state was different.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
