COLORED ONLY

In Jackson, Mississippi, 1961, there was a signed ordered by the police stating “WAITING ROOM FOR COLORED ONLY” in hospitals and medical centers to segregate between the blacks and whites. According to “Civil Rights and Healthcare: Remembering Simkins v. Cone (1963)”, during this time period, African American doctors, dentists, and surgeons were only allowed to practice on other African Americans.

Of course during that time, the majority of white people thought African Americas were filthy and didn’t want much to do with them unless they were serving them. Of course medical practice is very serious so they’re only going to trust “their kind.” If a sign like this is up, it just shows that they didn’t even want to sit with the “colored group.”

Eventually, “the United States Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case) deemed that the two hospitals’ policies of racial discrimination for both patient admissions and visiting physician staff privileges violated the fifth and fourteenth amendments of the Constitution.”

This was a positive changed for the “colored group” in that they didn’t have to feel so secluded and treated as if they were animals. In reading the article, “The difference between blacks and animals”, Alice white states, “animals were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites.”

When I that sign I felt like it related so much to that quote because in this day and age you only see signs like that if “NO DOGS ARE ALLOWED” in to a store or an area in a park. It just shows how much white people back then belittled African Americans just because of their complexion.

 

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