In America, the Jim Crow laws were in effect.
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States . Enacted by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures in the late nineteenth century after the Reconstruction period , these laws continued to be enforced until 1965 . They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America , starting in 1890 with a `` separate but equal '' status for African Americans in railroad cars .