Segregation
Segregation means to separate groups of people based on race by government mandate, typically to give more privileges or rights to the dominant group. For example in the 1960s, "Segregationists wanted policies that privileged whites."[1] In the southern United States, the policy was created and enforced by the Democratic Party starting in the 1870s. Segregation was allowed in public schools by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), but then prohibited in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
In addition to the public schools, segregation existed in the United States in the military before 1950. In the South it existed in public accommodations like trains, buses, restaurants, movie theaters and hotels before being banned by federal law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Notes
Segregation was supported by conservative Democrats whose moral values and traditions included segregation, nullification, limiting immigration to certain ethnic groups, and imposing American ideas and ideals on other cultures to the detriment of other cultures. Conservatives strongly opposed equal rights for nonwhites, women, homosexuals and the handicapped.