Natwerk Designs

Did every city in the country have segregated bathrooms back in the 50s, 60s? Or was just in the south?

I am doing a project for school and couldn't find information regarding segregation for bathrooms, water fountains, etc... Did every city in America have separate restrooms/bathrooms (like say St. Louis) or was just it just in the south?

Public Comments

1. "Mostly" it was just in the south at least until WWII because before that there simply wasn't enough of a black population outside of the Southern States to justify providing facilities for them. That doesn't mean that blacks could use the same facilities as whites - just that there 'were' no facilities for blacks. The Kaiser medical system, for example, was founded in 1942 by Kaiser Shipyards because they brought thousands of black workers from the South to CA to build liberty ships, only to find that hospitals in California simply wouldn't admit Blacks. To kep their black employees, therefore - at a time of a great labor shortage - they opened their own hospitals. Prior to that, there were no "seperate hospitals" for blacks and whites in CA - there were hospitals, but thy only admitted whites. The small number of Blacks got what care they could at home, or in the homes of black doctors. Richard
2. "-----segregation for bathrooms, water fountains, etc... " Must have been in the south. I graduated from high school in 1953 and even back when I was in grade school---nothing was segregated here. (Michigan.)
3. Neither. It was not every city, but it was certainly not just in the south. And it was not normally city-by-city, but it was normally state-by-state. After the Civil Rights Act of 1871 was passed, the nation was supposed to have been desegregated, but then many states (North AND South) passed what are called "Jim Crow Laws" which required segregation again in certain public and private venues. In the Supreme Court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), these segregating laws were deemed constitutional. They even continued on into the 1960s. I suggest googling "Jim Crow Laws," "Plessy v. Ferguson" and "Civil Rights Act of 1871 and 1964"