Birmingham Segregation Laws

(See also Freedom Now! Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)

Throughout the South, many states, counties, and municipalities had a bewildering array of inconsistent segregation laws mandating the separation of the races. Tens of thousands of men, women, girls, and boys — most of them Black, some white — were arrested during the Freedom Movement for violating these dehumanizing laws.

The few examples below from Birmingham Alabama are typical of the southern segregation laws that were eventually over-turned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

SECTION 359. SEPARATION OF RACES
It shall be unlawful for any person in charge or control of any room, hall, theater, picture house, auditorium, yard, court, ballpark, public park, or other indoor or outdoor place, to which both white persons and Negroes are admitted, to cause, permit or allow herein or thereon any theatrical performance, picture exhibition, speech or educational or entertainment program of any kind whatsoever, unless such room, hall, theater, picture house, auditorium, yard, court, ball park, or other place, has entrances, exits, and seating or standing sections set aside for and assigned to the use of Negroes, unless the entrances, exits and seating or standing sections set aside for and assigned to the use of white persons are distinctly separated from those set aside for and assigned to the use of Negroes, by well defined physical barriers, and unless the members of each race are affectively restricted and confined to the sections set aside for and assigned to the use of such race.

SECTION 369. SEPARATION OF RACES
It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place of the serving of food in the city at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.

SECTION 597. NEGROES AND WHITE PERSONS NOT TO PLAY TOGETHER.
It shall be unlawful for a Negro and a white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards, dice, dominoes or checkers. Any person, who being the owner, proprietor or keeper or superintendent, of any tavern, inn, restaurant, or other public house or public place, or the clerk, servant or employee or such owner, proprietor, keeper or superintendent, knowingly permits a Negro and a white person to play together or in company with each other at any game with cards, dice, dominoes or checkers in his house or on his premises shall, on conviction, be punished as provided in Section 4.

SECTION 1002. SEPARATION OF RACES.
Every common carrier engaged in operation of streetcars in the city for the carriage of passengers shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races by providing separate cars or by clearly indicating or designating by physical visible marks the area to be occupied by each race in any streetcar in which the two races are permitted to be carried together and by confining each race to occupancy of the area of such streetcar so set apart for it.

Every common carrier engaged in operating streetcars in the city for the carrying of passengers shall provide for each car used for white and colored passengers, separate entrances and exits to and from such cars in such manner as to prevent intermingling of the white and colored passengers when entering or leaving such car, but this provision for separate entrances and exits shall not apply to the cars operated on the following lines: The South Highland, Idlewild and Rugby Highland lines or routes.

It shall be unlawful for any such common carrier to aid in operating for the carriage of white or colored passengers, any streetcar not equipped as provided in this section. And it shall be unlawful for any person, contrary to the provisions of this section providing for equal and separate accommodations for the white and colored races on streetcars, to ride or attempt to ride in a car or a division of a car designed for the race to which such person does not belong. Failure to comply with this section shall be deemed as a misdemeanor.