dying segregation would do well to ask several questions:
- In what ways did international events influence national attitudes toward race at the turn of the 20th century?
- When and in what contexts did racial violence flair?
- How did segregation differ in urban and rural areas?
- How did African Americans strategies to challenge segregation evolve between the 1890s, the World War I era, the New Deal years, and during World War II and the Cold War?
- What factors shaped their successes and failures?
- Finally, why did the federal government allow such blatant injustices to flourish so long? What was its role in sustaining segregation outside of the South, whether through housing, loan, or urban renewal policies?
As the primary sources show, the South's vicious de jure system of segregation stands apart. Yet the rest of the nation's reliance on both informal custom and formal policy means that segregation—as well as the white supremacy and federal complicity that sustained it—cannot be dismissed as a regional aberration in an otherwise democratic nation.