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280 ChapterTen Segregation: Red, Yellow , Black, and White White Mississippians fought to establish their racial superiority after seizing control of the government in 1876. In order to achieve total dominance and feel secure as a ruling minority, whites created a segregation system designed to humiliate blacks as a means of social control. Ultimately the social customs required by whites as daily reminders denied blacks basic human dignity and degraded whites to the point that some performed unspeakable acts of barbarism in ritualistic lynchings designed to shore up the segregation system at the turn of the century. The Mississippi legislature did not pass the first law to enforce the separation of the races until 1888,but by that time customs had developed to the point that few laws were necessary . Segregation customs grew out of violent conflict and were designed to avoid further violence by forcing blacks to adopt a subservient attitude and manner, enforcing their deference to the ruling white minority. Customs varied from county to county and from town to town. Any black person traveling around the state had to seek guidance from a local black resident concerning the rules of the area. Some towns, such as Clinton , had a policy that no black man could remain inside the city limits after dark.A stranger unaware of the rule could place himself in extreme danger unintentionally. Whites created the segregated society through an evolutionary process, pressing for ever more stringent controls as they gained more political and economic power over blacks.As slavery gradually ended during the war and blacks joined the Union army occupying parts of the state, whites adjusted to being ordered about by their former slaves. One southern woman writing her memoirs at the turn of the century remembered being forced off of a Jackson sidewalk by a black man and her father’s resignation at the affront and his dire prediction of worse to come. During Reconstruction, whites never accepted freedmen as equals, but they had to recognize the power and position of black officeholders. Newspapers wrote of black leaders with titles such as “Mr.” The black elite lived in the best 281 Segregation: Red, Yellow, Black, and White | neighborhoods along with wealthy whites. When black leaders died, they were buried alongside whites in Jackson’s Greenwood cemetery. Blacks, and their white Republican allies,consented to segregate the new public schools, but they allowed interracial marriages and passed acts against discrimination in public transportation, even though they never tried to enforce the laws. In the 1880s whites gradually removed black officeholders and stepped up the rigidity of segregation. After the adoption of the 1890 constitution and the elimination of any black participation in the whites-only Democratic primary, whites imposed the harshest regime and practiced the most violent attacks on blacks by the turn of the century. Allowing for only two racial categories, Mississippi whites classed the Choctaw and the Delta Chinese as“colored.”The state established a separate, third school system for the Choctaw before the second Choctaw removal in 1903 and sometimes forced Chinese children to go to black schools. Mississippi law designated any person with one-eighthAfrican heritage as colored, but in practice, Mississippians adopted the one-drop policy, meaning that any African ancestry made a person black and thus subject to the sanctions imposed on“colored people.” According to racial customs, a white Mississippian refused to call a colored person by his or her last name, addressing them by their first name or as “boy”—never “man.”A black person, on the other hand, had to use a title of respect when speaking to any white. Boss, Captain, Mam, or Miss and the child’s first name for a white child were acceptable. A white man never removed his hat or touched it on the street for a black woman,but he always made those signs of deference to a white woman. Blacks did not sit in the presence of whites and always removed any headgear when a white man entered their vicinity. If whites approached blacks on a sidewalk, blacks had to step into the street for the whites to pass.A black driver dared not pass a white driver on any road. In some towns, blacks could not drive on certain streets—Capitol Street in Jackson, for example. Blacks never approached the front door of a white residence because they could only use the back door. Some whites adopted the habit of locking the back door when they were...

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