Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Segregation

The act or process of separating a race, class, or ethnic group from a society's general population.

Segregation in the United States has been practiced, for the most part, on African Americans. Segregation by law, or de jure segregation, of African Americans was developed by state legislatures and local lawmaking bodies in southern states shortly after the Civil War. De facto segregation, or inadvertent segregation, continues to exist in varying degrees in both northern and southern states.

De facto segregation arises from social and economic factors and cannot be traced to official government action. For example, ZONING laws that forbid multifamily housing can have the effect of excluding all but the wealthiest persons from a particular community.

De jure segregation was instituted in the southern states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth...