SIGN OF THE TIMES | Southern segregation

Saying that the extent of segregation was "only limited by the creativity of Southern lawmakers," Dr. Paul Finkelman offered other examples to demonstrate the nature of it:
When the University of Texas School of Law was ordered in 1947 to admit a black student unless and until a separate, equal school for blacks was built, the university opened a basement school that day; the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the basement school was not equal.Outside rare examples, higher education was completely segregated; at the primary and secondary level, there was not a single integrated education system in the South.In Clarendon County, S.C., blacks "would have been too afraid to demand equal schools. Anyone who did that would have been lynched," Finkelman said. What the black schools asked for was a bus to transport rural students to school after the bus they used broke down. When the school board said no, the county became the first defendant in the Brown vs. Board of Education case.In the criminal justice system, Southern laws established separate jails and holding cells for blacks and banned the handcuffing of blacks and whites.Officials in the textile industry in South Carolina could be fined or jailed if they did not provide separate work rooms. They also were required to assure that whites and blacks did not use entrances, exits, stairways, lavatories, or pay windows at the same time.Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee and Texas required mining companies to provide segregated showers, lockers and clothing.Louisiana required separate circus entrances, at least 25 feet apart.Florida not only had separate schools, but separate textbooks that were stored in separate warehouses during summer months.New Orleans had segregated red-light districts.Oklahoma segregated lakes for fishing.Georgia, in 1938, kept the names of black and white taxpayers in separate books.