Pervasive Jim Crow Apartheid System Covers All Aspects of Public Life

Throughout the South in the 1920s and 1930s, segregation by law covered virtually all aspects of public life: separate water fountains, waiting rooms, restaurants, theaters, parks, beaches, hospitals, cemeteries, schools, jails, courtrooms (with separate Bibles for oath-taking), and even telephone booths. Beyond legal segregation, 'sundown towns' where Black people faced arrest or violence if found after dark existed throughout the North and Midwest. Researcher James Loewen later documented over 10,000 sundown towns across America, demonstrating that racial exclusion was a national rather than merely Southern phenomenon.