had controlled the lives of Southern blacks since the late 1800s. Jim Crow laws said that blacks and whites must use different schools, restaurants, hotels, theaters, parks, sections of trains and buses, and so on. Even funeral homes and cemeteries were segregated! In the few places where blacks and whites shared public services—such as post offices and banks—African Americans had to wait for all whites to be served first.

In the North, segregation happened by practice and custom. Many African Americans moved to Northern cities during the 1940s, and whites responded by moving to the suburbs. African Americans found themselves trapped in city slums—poor neighborhoods where housing and schools were bad and where there were few jobs.

Both Northern and Southern segregation were wrong and both forms of segregation denied black people an equality that they had a right to as Americans. In the 1950s, some African Americans were determined to change things. They started the Civil Rights Movement. This movement brought together many people and for some, the struggle to win equality became their life’s work.

Many white people moved out of Northern cities when African Americans moved in. Neighborhoods like Harlem, New York (pictured), suffered because of a lack of city services.