Leon Litwack summarizes the big picture well: Racial segregation or exclusion thus haunted the northern Negro in his attempt to use public conveyances, to attend schools, or to sit in theaters, churches, and lecture halls. But even the more subtle forms of twentieth-century racial discrimination had their antecedents in the ante bellum North: residential restrictions, exclusion from resorts and certain restaurants, confinement to menial employments, and restricted cemeteries. The justification for such discrimination in the North differed little from that used to defend slavery in the South:
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