[traditionalist]

That aside, Blacks did not have the legal right to stay at a motel, eat at a lunch counter, much less buy a home in a non-Black area until the mid 60's.

That was only true in the South.

[wardaddy]

I only recall laws against miscegenation(legal definition) in the South by the mid 60s. Many of the segregationist practices you allude to were in fact practice and not law. There was no law prohibiting those practices...that is where the change took place, enacting new law to prohibit segregation/discrimination rather than repealing or overturning laws promoting the two aside from the poll tax and a few others...which had taken place prior to the mid 60s.


De facto discrimination practices still existed not just in the South. They still do. My daughters from my first marriage attend Curtis Middle School in Sudbury Mass. I was just there last November to visit. The only black children in their school are MECO students bused in from inner Boston. There are absolutely no blacks living in Sudbury Township within their school district that have children of the age to attend Curtis...either that or they go to private schools it would appear. I don't think there are laws to keep them out, it's simply defacto segregation which is much more common up north where the black populace is such a tiny percentage of the overall population as opposed to down here where blacks are 30-40%. Here in Nashville, I know of no suburban public school with no black students.

My neighborhood of Forest Hills here in Nashville has a number of middle and upper middle class black professional families....Eddie George(pro footballer and great neighbor to all the kids) for example. Why are there so few blacks in Sudbury? Is it money?...or just custom even if the intent is benign?

I don't know but it does raise an interesting point.

For the record, I'm all for voluntary integration but I haven't much faith in government ordered integration however well intended. Prohibiting practices or laws that deprived folks of full citizenship rights based on race is a fine idea but that's where it should have stopped. Unfortunately, it did not.

Segregation by practice and custom still exists everywhere and for a variety of reasons. I spent 8 years Manhattan...same thing there more or less.