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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 29. Patterns of Social Segregation and Discrimination - 6. Segregation in Specific Types of Institutions
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634 An American Dilemma
Most other public facilities—such as libraries, parks, playgrounds—are
available to Negroes with about the same amount of discrimination and
segregation, in the various regions of the country, as in schools. Negroes
are not permitted to use these in the South unless they are acting in a
servant capacity. Many Southern cities have separate parks, playgrounds,
and libraries for Negroes, but in all cases they are poor substitutes for
those available to whites. In a few cities in the Upper South Negroes are
allowed to enter some of the general parks. In a few Southern cities, such
as Nashville and Richmond, upper class Negroes are allowed to use the
white library if they sit at a special table or in a special room. Interlibrary
loans from the white to the Negro library also improve the situation in
some cities.^^ In the North there is no segregation or discrimination in the
use of these facilities, except that created by residential segregation and
the unfriendliness of a relatively few white officials and members of the
puSlic.
Segregation of Negroes in jails, penitentiaries, reformatories, insane
asylums, follows the same pattern found for schools and other public
facilities, except that there is somewhat more segregation in the North in
this respect than in others, and practically no exceptions to the segregational
pattern in the South. When the institution has as its primary importance,
not to protect white society, but to be of service to the Negro individual
or community—as in the case of asylums for the insane and feeble-minded
or specialized institutions for juvenile delinquents—many Southern states
and localities do not have a Negro unit at all.’^® Charles S. Mangum
comments on this last point: ^^This is one of the most flagrant violations
of the spirit of the constitutional guarantee of equal treatment by the
states discovered in this investigation.”^®
Negroes may enter public buildings in the South as well as in the North,
but in the South the rules are that they must not loiter, must remove their
hats, must not expect service until all whites have been accommodated
(with the exception of many post offices and other buildings owned by the
federal government), must sit in rear or side seats in most courtrooms, and
in general must follow the etiquette most cautiously. Of all the institutions
run by the government, public bathing beaches, pools and bath houses
have the most complete segregation.
The pattern of segregation found in privately run public services is in
the South often less rigid than in those operated by government. This
differential—not great—occurs because businessmen are more solicitous
about Negro customers than local governments are about Negro citizens.
A good part of the segregation and discrimination that does occur in such
facilities as railroad trains, railroad waiting rooms and ticket offices, street-
cars, buses and taxicabs occurs because the law requires it. The law compels
the transportation companies to bear the extra costs of maintaining two sets
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