The Former Confederacy & Modern American Politics, Part Four

Schools throughout the United States were segregated, with all schools in the former Confederacy being so. This whole order of segregated education, and of segregated public facilities in general, was reinforced by a Supreme Court decision in the 1890s known as "Plessy versus Ferguson," which blindly accepted the notion that separate white and black schools and other facilities were "separate but equal." The idea that in the former Confederate states, and elsewhere, for that matter, that black schools were funded to an equal degree as white schools was a bunch of nonsense, and by the mid 1950s, the Supreme Court unanimously declared it to be nonsense in the case, "Brown versus the Board of Education (of Topeka, Kansas)," as state and local laws making for segregated schools were declared unconstitutional.

Actually desegregating schools has been a challenge ever since, but for the first several years, there were outright confrontations over the issue, such as in Arkansas, where Governor Orval Faubus, a Democrat, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block black students from entering, what had been, the white high school in the state capital of Little Rock. This brought President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, to send in U.S. Army troops and placing the Arkansas National Guard under his overall control, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. By the early 1960s, Democrat George Wallace was elected governor of Alabama, and he made the television news by standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block the entry of black students. President John Kennedy ordered the National Guard to secure the admittance of the students.      

WORD HISTORY: 
Segregate-This compound, "somewhat" distantly related to "aggregate," goes back to Indo European "se(d)," which had the meaning, "alone, separate, apart." This gave Latin "se," used as a prefix. The main body of the word goes back to Indo European "ger," which had the notion, "to put together, to gather together." This gave Latin "grex," which meant "herd or flock." The direct form seems to have come from either the genitive, "gregis," dative "gregi," or ablative "grege." When combined, Latin had "segregare," which literally meant, "to set apart from the herd," but more practically, "to set aside, to divide off." One of its participle forms was "segregatus," and this was borrowed by English in the mid 1500s.