9.5 Segregated Lives

LO 9.5: Examine how racial segregation persists.

Segregation is the physical and social separation of different groups, but it typically does not involve complete separation. Under de jure segregation (“by law”)in the United States, the law required segregation. Laws to enforce racial segregation included laws prohibiting some groups from living in an area, banning interracial marriage, and keeping schools, workplaces, hospitals, and more racially segregated.

De jure segregation was declared unconstitutional in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This case concluded that “separate but equal” racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. However, White people resisted desegregation. For example, in 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was the first Black child to integrate an all-White school in Louisiana (Rose, 2021). For the first year, federal marshals escorted her to school because protestors threw things at her (see Photo 9.16). At school, she was the only student of Barbara Henry because no other teacher would teach her, and none of the other parents would allow their children in the same classroom with her (Rose, 2021).

Photo 9.16

U.S. Marshals Escorting Ruby Bridges to School in 1960

As a result of White people’s often-violent resistance to desegregation, President John F. Kennedy asked Congress to pass a civil rights bill in 1963 (U.S. Department of Labor, 2024). Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, and it fell to President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended several forms of de jure segregation. It “prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal” (National Archives, 2022). However, in 2025 President Trump issued an Executive Order curtailing the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act (Wiessner, 2025).

While legally enforced racial segregation is prohibited in the United States, de facto segregation persists. De facto segregation (“in reality”)is the segregation that occurs in practice. More than 70 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, most students are attending schools that are largely segregated by race. Moreover, a sizable number of students attend schools in which at least half of the students are of the same race or ethnicity (see Figure 9.5). In other words, schools are de facto segregated.

Further, schools with a high proportion of students of color often have high poverty rates. These schools often have few qualified teachers, dated textbooks and technology, and less access to advanced courses (Reardon et al., 2021). In other words, schools are racially and economically segregated.