For many years in the American South, signage served as a daily, highly visible signal of who belonged where—and who did not. In the Associated Press’s “American Objects” series marking the country’s 250th anniversary, Aaron Morrison described “Whites Only” signs and related notices as reminders that Black people lived life alongside, yet separate from, people deemed white.
Morrison said such signs were displayed on doors and windows and functioned like headlines from the era’s newspapers, spelling out subordinate status as a matter of public etiquette enforced in ordinary spaces. The report cited examples of the messages that appeared on signage, including “No dogs, no Negros, no Mexicans,” “Colored served in rear,” and “For whites only.”
AP also described how the Jim Crow system developed after the Civil War and the collapse of Reconstruction, regulating “the free movement” of Black and white people through a mix of etiquette and law. The reporting said the system was supported by racist beliefs that formerly enslaved Black people and their descendants were inferior in fundamental ways, including intelligence, morality and behavior, and that equality between white and Black people might encourage interracial sexual relations and a “rise” of a supposed “abominable race.”
According to AP, spatial segregation first became culturally accepted and then was enforced violently or through threats of re-enslavement carried out via incarceration. After the 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” doctrine, the report said the signage and rules around segregation became more statutory than simply strongly worded warnings.
The AP account described a wide range of public facilities where segregation was enforced by signage, including railway cars, buses, water fountains, restrooms, hotels, lunch counters, and swimming pools. It said Black people were forced to use substandard facilities, and it also noted that schools, churches and cemeteries were long divided by race.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legalized racial separatism, AP reported, but Morrison said many in the American South resisted desegregation after signs were pulled down and placed into museums. In AP’s description of the episode’s broader legacy, Steven Reich, a history professor and author of an encyclopedia on the Jim Crow era, said one lasting impact of legalized segregation remains visible in the modern American workforce.
Reich told AP that segregation divided the working class and compelled white workers to identify more with their employers than with their Black co-workers. He said that dynamic continues to stifle opportunities for Black and white workers to organize and work together on common issues such as diversity and inclusion.