#Segregated

[blondebrainpowered]

Ronald McNair was an American NASA astronaut and physicist. He died at the age of 35 during the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L on January 28, 1986, in which he was serving as one of three mission specialists in a crew of seven.

Prior to the Challenger disaster, McNair flew as a mission specialist on STS-41-B aboard Challenger from February 3 to 11, 1984, becoming the second black American in space.

In the summer of 1959, Ronald McNair refused to leave the segregated Lake City Public Library in South Carolina without being allowed to check out his books. After the police and his mother were called, McNair was allowed to borrow books from the library; the building that housed the library at the time is now named after him. A children's book, Ron's Big Mission, offers a fictionalized account of this event.

[yearningforunity]

Segregated waiting room at Union Station railroad depot, Jacksonville, Florida, 1921. Photograph by Woodward Studio.

[whitesinhistory]

On Saturday, September 7, 1963, local merchants in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, began enforcing an ordinance that denied service to all members of the U.S. military, regardless of their race, to protest integration. In a choice between patriotic support for the U.S. military and a commitment to racial segregation, the parish chose bigotry. The day before, a new local ordinance in Plaquemines Parish banning civilian restaurants from serving all military members and prohibiting parish residents from visiting the integrated Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans took effect. While Black veterans were often the target of physical violence and social humiliation, this restaurant ordinance barred all sailors from service, regardless of race, rather than comply with integration. At the time, segregationist Leander Perez knew that the ordinance would “hurt our good white boys who are in the military service” and would bring a significant loss in revenue, but he nevertheless argued that banning service for all troops was necessary because maintaining segregation was more important. Local merchants—including a shopkeeper named Mrs. Charles T. Boone who owned the Hummingbird Restaurant in Belle Chase, Louisiana—complied. On September 7, she pointed to a sign that read “Parish law forbids me to serve military personnel in uniform" and refused to serve coffee to two members of the U.S. Navy. Mr. Perez championed the ordinance as an aggressive response to a report from President John F. Kennedy's Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Services ("The Geller Report"). The Geller Report issued a series of recommendations aimed at combatting racial discrimination in the armed services. In particular, the report urged military officers to declare segregated civilian establishments "off-limits" to those under their command. Leander Perez, who defended the military service ban, served as district attorney, judge, and political boss in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, during the civil rights era. A devout Catholic, he took a segregationist position so extreme that the Archbishop of the Diocese of New Orleans excommunicated him from the church. An active member of his local white citizens' council, Mr. Perez gave public speeches pledging to outlaw the NAACP, describing integration as the "mongrelization of the races," and encouraging politicians to commit criminal contempt in defiance of desegregation orders. 

Learn more about Leander Perez and other segregationist leaders who fought to maintain white supremacy here.

[ftmtftm]

You all realize Feminists have been critiquing "women only spaces" for decades right?

I think often about Audre Lorde's critique of a women only event that welcomed her wife and daughter, but not her son. Because she questioned it - the function and purpose of barring even the sons of Feminist women from Feminist events. Especially the barring of her young Black son, who would otherwise be left alone in the city where he would be more prone to the very violence those same Feminist women claimed to want to change.

Because what functional, forward thinking Feminist purpose does it actually serve to do that? What message does that send to women with sons, husbands, brothers, lovers, friends, who want to involve the men and boys in their lives in their activism? Who want to build a functionally better world for us all outside of the oppressive grasp of Patriarchy? Especially for the marginalized men who often sit at their own intersection violent Patriarchal oppression, that still happens to be Patriarchal oppression despite it not being distinctly misogyny?

What purpose does it truly serve to sequester yourself away into a pocket of the world, detached from those you share it with? What bright and shining future does that really promise you?

[kropotkindersurprise]

James Baldwin, talking about living his life based on observable fact, instead of white liberal promises. [link]

[moniquill]

You folks know that there is nothing inherently dangerous about penises, right? They don't emit radiation or anything. You will not be harmed by being in the same room as a penis.

[afloweroutofstone]

You ever look at the road planning of a Southern US city and think to yourself, “there are some countries where an urban planner would go to jail for planning a city like this”

[afriblaq]

Separate and excelling

[blondebrainpowered]

In June of 1958, David Isom was nineteen years old when he decided he wanted to go for a swim and headed to a nearby pool. It was a white-only pool in Florida, but that didn't stop him. He walked right in and began using the facility, which sparked outrage.

The manager of the facility immediately closed down the place and made everyone leave. Then they drained and cleaned the pool in hopes it would be sanitized and ready for only white people to use again. 

According to the Amityville Echo, The Spa Pool was a swimming pool in Florida that opened in 1955 near the Spa Beach. Since both facilities were reserved for white people only, Black people were relegated to using an area in Tampa Bay called “The South Mole,” a trash littered beach that had a tiny swimming pool area near it. On June 8, 1958, Isom decided that enough was enough, taking matters into his own hands and taking a bold action that would effectively change the course of history. 

He entered the Spa Pool after purchasing a ticket at the counter. The cashier later said that she was told to treat him “like any other citizen.” There were already about 45 white people at the pool that day, and Isom said he paid little attention to them as he got in the pool and swam alongside the other patrons. Tommy Chinnis, the lifeguard on duty, echoed those sentiments, saying that they also paid little attention to him because “he was like everyone else.” 

However, the Spa Pool manager, John Gough, closed the pool down after Isom’s swim, proving he wasn’t “like everyone else.” Gough said he was acting at the behest of city manager Ross Windom who told him the facility needed to be closed because “a n***** had used the facilities.” While the fallout from the incident was swift, both the Spa Pool and Spa Beach closing, Isom said that he didn’t actually experience any tension while there, maintaining that swimming in a clean pool should “not be a privilege, just a right.” 

The pool remained closed until, Florida city council members opening it again in 1959 under the direction of new city manager George K. Armes. In assuming his new position, Armes declared that the facility would remain open unless there was “trouble.”

[renthony]

It's real fucked up how many queer people dread Pride season due to both systemic queerphobia and queer infighting. Pride season always rockets up my anxiety, and I know I'm not the only one.

This shit sucks, y'all. We gotta support each other more than the queerphobes hate us. I'm not saying we have to love each other, I'm not saying we even have to like each other, but we cannot keep subdividing communities, circulating callouts, and dogpiling each other over who has it worse. That shit will kill us all.

We cannot keep thinking of our individual experiences with bigotry as, "I know [xyz kind of queer] has it worse, but...", and we cannot keep looking at other experiences with bigotry as, "that's bad, but [abc kind of queer] still has it worse," when the reality is that we are all being targeted. It's all bad! It all deserves to be talked about and fought against without trying to put it in some kind of hierarchy! Hierarchies are not fucking helpful here!

Some fucking unity, please.

[whitesinhistory]

On August 24, 1956, Virginia Governor Thomas Stanley pledged to close Virginia’s public schools rather than permit any racial integration. "If we accept admission of one Negro child into a white school, it's all over…we will have given up," he said.

Governor Stanley’s remarks flagrantly defied the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. The governor’s remarks also signaled his rejection of a rival plan by some Virginia politicians— who sought to preserve segregation while appearing to abide by the Court’s decision—that would give all students in the state the choice between attending a segregated school or an integrated one.

The same day, the governor received a petition signed by 30,000 Virginians asking him to “do everything” to maintain segregation in the state’s schools and Governor Stanley claimed his plan was “supported by at least 95 percent of all white people in Virginia.”

The next month, the Virginia General Assembly approved Governor Stanley’s so-called “Stanley Plan,” under which the governor could close and withdraw funding from any school that tried to integrate. Nine schools were soon closed in Warren County, Charlottesville, and Norfolk.

Additionally, the state school system was placed in the hands of the governor, who created a board to oversee individually all transfers of students between schools. The governor’s office made 450,000 pupil assignments without ever permitting a Black child to attend a school with white children.

Lawmakers also enacted a tuition grant program that gave over $1 million to white students to attend segregated private schools.

While aspects of the Stanley Plan were eventually ruled unconstitutional by state and federal courts, white Virginians were largely successful in preventing the integration of public schools in the state. Five years after the Brown ruling, fewer than 1% of Black students in Virginia attended an integrated public school. Ten years after Brown, that number had only increased to 5%.

The principles of the Stanley Plan were widely copied in other Southern states. To read more about the “massive resistance” of white Southern elected officials and their supporters to the integration of public schools, read EJI’s report, Segregation in America.

[sexhaver]

the thing about dems who unironically buy into the whole "they go low, we go high" shtick where they see republicans being corrupt and using underhanded/illegal tactics and respond by virtuously Fighting Fair is that like... a (nominally) two-party system where one party plays dirty and the other doesn't does not result in a government that's only 50% corrupt; it results in the corrupt party winning more and more without any resistance. like, fuck it, we already live under a corrupt government, can the corruption at least do something good or cool for us every now and then? remember when Jimmy Carter won his race for governor of Georgia by appealing to racist voters and then said "the time for segregation is over" in his acceptance speech? can we go back to that kind of shit?

[saywhat-politics]

'Segregated facilities' are no longer explicitly banned in federal contracts

After a recent change by the Trump administration, the federal government no longer explicitly prohibits contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms and drinking fountains.

The segregation clause is one of several identified in a public memo issued by the General Services Administration last month, affecting all civil federal agencies. The memo explains that it is making changes prompted by President Trump's executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion, which repealed an executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 regarding federal contractors and nondiscrimination. The memo also addresses Trump's executive order on gender identity.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/03/18/nx-s1-5326118/segregation-federal-contracts-far-regulation-trump

[unbfacts]

In 1967, Julia Roberts' parents welcomed Martin Luther King Jr.'s children into their Atlanta acting school during segregation. When the Roberts family couldn't pay the hospital bill after Julia's birth, the Kings covered the expenses in gratitude.

[afriblaq]

[kataraavatara]

“obviously people in the modern day can recognize what nesta did as verbal abuse even if they didn’t have the words for it in univers-” well if we’re using modern day terms Rhysand and Feyre are segregationists who allow child soldiers and are enacting both collective and multigenerational punishment on an entire city of people. so why don’t you ruminate on that for a little bit.