claim: During the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the American South, some businesses posted "colored only, no whites allowed" signs over their doors.
origin: For years now, there has existed a thrivingÂ trade in so-called â€œBlack Americana,â€ a catchall term forÂ historical memorabilia related toÂ Americaâ€™s racist past. The items valued by collectorsÂ range from real artifacts of slavery to relics ofÂ the â€œJim Crowâ€ era of segregation in the South toÂ examples of offensiveÂ racial stereotyping in popular culture (many of which date from not veryÂ long ago). SomeÂ of these items, by their very nature, trigger controversy.Â Others becomeÂ tainted with controversy whenÂ divorced from their original contexts or inserted into new ones,Â inviting misinterpretation or misunderstanding. An example of the latter is a subset of commercial signage from the Jim Crow period enforcing the segregation of blacks and whites. Few people nowadays are surprised to learn that â€œWhites Onlyâ€ signs were posted on entrances to public buildings and facilities, but the fact that â€œBlacks Onlyâ€ or â€œColoreds Onlyâ€ signs existed seems to flummox a lot ofÂ people. One example postedÂ toÂ the snopes.com Facebook group for verification on 10 May 2017 prompted an intense debate, partly because it was introduced in a new, ahistorical context: Having searched in vain for evidence to back it up, weâ€™re skeptical of the claim that signs like this are currently â€œappearing on college campusesâ€ in the United States, though we have seen such images used to illustrate Internet posts (such as here andÂ here)Â decrying alleged instances of â€œreverse discriminationâ€. It isÂ real, but hardly an example of racism against white people. The sign depicted above dates from 1921, and it originallyÂ adorned the Lenox Theatre in the once-thriving â€œGolden Blocksâ€ business district of Augusta, Georgia, which was home to dozens of black-owned businesses, including restaurants, banks, theaters, a meat market,Â and a real estate agency. The Lenox was, in fact, a â€œcolored onlyâ€ movie theaterÂ â€” a place where African American patrons werenâ€™t relegated to sitting in the back rows, as was typically the caseÂ in theaters across the segregatedÂ South (if African Americans were allowed to enter such places at all), according to a retrospective in theÂ Augusta Chronicle: < The Lenox Theatre was begun by black businessmen because blacks were frustrated with their treatment in the white theaters along Broad Street. J. Philip Waring, founder of the Augusta Black History Committee and a retired Urban League executive, in a 1995 interview recalled the efforts of his father, John P. Waring Sr., one of the Lenox founders. â€œWhy the Lenox?â€ said Waring, who is now deceased. â€œBecause this was the height of Jim Crowism â€”Â the rule of the day, manifested by black people having to go through the back alley and going through the very back, up the fire escape at the Imperial Theatre. They called it the â€˜buzzardâ€™s roost.â€™ There were all sorts of jokes about it. > More typically, â€œcolored onlyâ€ signs designated building entrances or public facilities (such as restrooms, swimming pools and drinking fountains) that African Americans wereÂ allowed to use (when they existed at all), in lieu of those marked â€œwhite only.â€Â Despite itsÂ â€œseparate but equalâ€ credo, Jim CrowÂ perpetuated inequality by grantingÂ preferential treatment to whites, author Jerrold M. Parks writes in American Nightmare: The History of Jim CrowÂ (Macmillan, 2003): < Though the â€œseparate but equalâ€ formula in Plessy [an 1896 Supreme Court decision upholding the legality of racial discrimination in the states] underlay the sweep of Jim Crow through the South, the â€œequalâ€ half of the couplet never approached parity with the â€œseparateâ€ half. The reality of â€œequalityâ€ meant that the Negro part of everything would be indisputably and often grotesquely inferior to its white counterpart: black schools almost never achieved â€”Â and rarely even approached â€”Â equality with those for whites; black transportation facilities were famously and invariably shabbier than their white counterparts; when drinking fountains later became electrically cooled, a score of iconic photos showed the ice-water machines with For White Only signs hanging over them while under the For Colored Only placards stood ordinary and unquestionably nonelectrified appliances. > That a vintage â€œno whites allowedâ€ sign from that eraÂ should engender a raging debate about â€œreverse racismâ€ in 2017 betrays an woefulÂ ignorance of American history.Â It wasnâ€™t an instanceÂ of discrimination when black-owned businesses such as the Lenox Theatre enacted â€œcolored onlyâ€Â policiesÂ in the segregated South; on the contrary, it wasÂ one of the few means at handÂ to redressÂ it.Â