Explanation: Almost as soon as the Civil War ended, southern state legislatures passed "black codes," which, for example, limited the kinds of work black people could do and their freedom of assembly, or regulated their speech toward white people. African Americans exercised basic rights under Reconstruction, but when that period ended, southern states began revising their constitutions and passing new laws that eventually established the system of segregation: separation of white and black Americans in nearly every aspect of life. Schools, housing, libraries, restaurants, parks and beaches, transportation, and theaters like the one shown here were segregated, and African Americans were required to use "colored" toilets, water fountains, and waiting rooms in public places. They did not receive equal protection under the law, were often tried and convicted without representation by a lawyer, and rarely served on juries. Black voting rights were severely restricted by poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and discriminatory tests. Although legal segregation was confined to the eleven states of the former Confederacy, as well as Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia, segregation was also practiced by the federal government. During World War I, the armed forces were segregated; black soldiers held service positions, rather than leadership or combat positions. But in World War II, African Americans were no longer willing to accept segregated or discriminatory conditions. A threatened march on Washington in 1941 led to Franklin Roosevelt's executive order prohibiting discrimination in the defense industries; in 1948, the armed forces were desegregated. Moreover, African American service and sacrifice in the war effort heightened resistance to segregation once the war ended, when blacks returned to civilian life to find that they still could not buy a Coca-Cola at a machine such as the one in this photograph because of the color of their skin. Although there was no mass civil rights movement between World War I and the end of World War II, as there was in the 1950s and 1960s, organizations and individuals led public protests and lobbying efforts during this period. For example, in 1919, the NAACP published a report, "Thirty Years of Lunching, 1889-1919;" in 1921, the organization opened an office in Washington, D.C., to lobby for an antilynching bill. In 1934, Howard University students, wearing noises around their necks, pocketed the National Crime Conference when the conference leaders refused to discuss lynching as a national crime. A decade later, African Americans lobbied for legislation to end the poll tax. This photograph, taken in 1944, shows "pallbearer" with a casket signaling the end of Jim Crow, marching in the NAACP's Detroit, Michigan, "Parade for Victory." Such relatively modest steps for racial equality presaged a movement that would profoundly change the United States.
