No doubt that there were (and are) racists everywhere. There’s a difference IMO when the government explicitly writes it into law.
Here are some examples from Kentucky:
1944: Railroads
Separate coaches for white and African American passengers were required.
1948: Barred School Segregation
This law did not allow African American physicians and nurses to take postgraduate courses in public hospitals and Louisville
1953: Health Care
It was required to establish separate tuberculosis hospitals for each race.
1956: Employment
Provided that all persons, firms, or corporations create separate bathroom facilities for members of the white and African American races employed by them or allowed to come into the business. In addition, separate rooms to eat in as well as separate eating and drinking utensils were required to be provided for members of the white and African American races
1956: Public Accommodations
All public parks, recreation centers, playgrounds, etc. were required to be segregated.
1956: Public Carrier
All forms of public transportation were to be segregated.
1957: Education
All public schools were required to be racially segregated
Were there similar laws in effect in the north during this time? I’m not aware of any though am happy to be corrected. My PA-born and raised family was always horrified to hear of such things as segregated lunch counters, buses, water fountains when they passed through the South.
There are any number of books articles etc on “de facto” vs. “de jure” segregation - but yes pizza girl- there were many areas in non “former confederate” states (and FYI- Kentucky did not secede - fought in Union) with segregation laws. Esp at the city level. I would point to a couple examples: 1st the landmark case "Brown (et all) vs Topeka Brd of Ed. Educational segregation began to fall in Kansas- not the south. 2nd, the army was also “legally” segregated until after WWII (think of Tuskegee Airmen etc)- it was president Eisenhower that desegregated the military as commander in chief. So that was a “national” segregation.
It was President Truman who ordered the desegregation of the military via EO 9981 on July 26, 1948. Also, Washington DC was segregated under the direction of President Woodrow Wilson.
@MYOS1634 The U.S. Did not enter the war out of any sympathy for the Jewish people or any of the other categories of people being sent to concentration and extermination camps. We had plenty of opportunity to shut down supply lines to the camps or the camps themselves and chose not to (have relatives who flew bombers that will vouch for that). We turned back shiploads of Jewish refugees. We basically ignored the camps and the people in them until the end of the war (no need reels of their plight).
It is not really a “stand for truth” to claim that slavery was only a side issue in the causes of the Civil War. It is (at best) replacing one narrative that may be inaccurate or oversimplified with one that is even more inaccurate.
@NoVADad99- you are absolutely right with Truman- I was thinking of Eisenhower And little rock with the national guard- brain fart BTW- Wilson was a massive racist (and one of my lead favorite presidents, but that’s not important) - he wrote the opening message to DW Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”.
"but yes pizza girl- there were many areas in non “former confederate” states (and FYI- Kentucky did not secede - fought in Union) with segregation laws. "
But they weren’t at the same LEVEL of segregated bathrooms, buses, water fountains, etc. I don’t know why there is such a resistance to admitting that certain parts of the country had more dehumanizing laws in effect for a longer period of time. “But the North isn’t perfect” doesn’t change that.
Racial segregation does not require explicit laws to happen or be maintained. Chicago had, for the longest time, the unenviable reputation of being one of the most racially segregated cities in the US, and probably still is, according to http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse-cities-are-often-the-most-segregated/ . Another article at http://uchicagogate.com/2014/06/02/a-wall-around-hyde-park/ describes the history of racial segregation in Chicago (including the role of the University of Chicago), including the statement that "After spending a frustrating year in Chicago fighting housing segregation, Martin Luther King Jr. declared that ‘the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn to hate.’ "
@KKmama: that’s my point exactly. We could argue that Concentration Camps and the Shoah were “side issues” in WW2, in fact concentration camps could be argued more convincingly to be a “side issue” in WW2 than slavery in the Civil War, yet we would never do that, because being “one of many issues” doesn’t make haShoah less significant to Western History, beyond even WW2, in the same way as slavery as a phenomenon and a “cultural element worth defending” can’t be considered a “side issue” historically or morally speaking.
Of course someone could argue that both groups used to be taken too seriously and that the reason Texas did one and not the other is that “Jewish people have undue influence” whereas African Americans have been politically “kept in their place” in Texas… but I hope no one’s going to go there.
To me it’s equally offensive. I don’t live in Texas and people are free to vote in whichever way they want, so if they find it okay, then it’s their choice and their right.
What I object to is the publishing industry forcing this onto everyone else in order to cut costs. This is why I think we, as parents, ought to request our States don’t endorse any Texas-based textbooks, and why our State Lawmakers should take a stand on that issue. We didn’t vote for this change to the history curriculum, we didn’t vote for our textbooks to reflect another State’s views, and we shouldn’t inflict that on our children.
Read/see “A Raisin in the Sun” - an incredibly powerful work. (Set in Chicago) This is just my opinion - but one of the worst aspects of northern racism to me has always been the fact that it has often been “under the table”. The law proclaims equality- but that has often not been reality (and attempts at enforcement fell on deaf ears for decades). At least the southern racists called a spade a spade.
“Racial segregation does not require explicit laws to happen or be maintained. Chicago had, for the longest time, the unenviable reputation of being one of the most racially segregated cities in the US, and probably still is,”
No argument. But whatever. Pretend it wasn’t dehumanizing to have separate water fountains and blacks at the back of the bus.
If Lincoln wasn’t elected there wouldn’t have been a Civil war either. The direct cause was the Confederate attack on Fort Sumpter, not the secession and not slavery/abolition. Unless there’s some clear definition of “side issue” I’m not aware of, I don’t know how to say that slavery and the secession weren’t side issues.
Well, it seems to me that the Civil War was the result of a number of factors that divided the North and South. One of these–and an important one–was slavery. If something has multiple causes, that doesn’t mean that one of them is a “side issue.” I think the centrality of slavery to the conflict can be improperly de-emphasized or improperly emphasized.
Gee, dehumanizing an entire race - suggesting that they were so “less than” that you needed to keep them using different fountains and lunch counters and restaurants and bathrooms and seats on the bus because they might have cooties that would attack respectable people – seems pretty darn bad to me, and nothing anyone should be proud of or justify by saying “other areas of the country aren’t perfect either.” Why not just say it was shameful, and that the South lagged the rest of the country on these dimensions?
Slavery was a central, not a side, issue in the Civil War. But the purpose of the Civil War was not to end slavery. It just worked out that way. It was fought, like most wars, over politics and power and money.
Lincoln was willing to do whatever was expedient on slavery in order achieve the goal of preserving the Union. He was no abolitionist:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
Yes, the north did not initially try to end slavery, even though the south made it clear that slavery was the biggest reason for secession. The south has nothing to be proud of in the causes of secession and the Civil War, but it is not like the north should get a free pass either.
BTW- Wilson was a massive racist (and one of my lead favorite presidents, but that’s not important) - he wrote the opening message to DW Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”.