The ruling did not address separate restrooms, bus seats, or hotel rooms, so Jim Crow laws remained intact. But cautious first steps toward an equal society had been taken. The front line of culture wars in America has often been the bathroom.
It should surprise no one that the debate over transgender rights and equalities has focused on bathrooms. Issues of equality. In its latest move to eliminate race-conscious policy across the federal government, the Trump administration rescinded a clause in federal contracts that prohibited segregated facilities.
Though laws about bathroom use by transgender people have sparked new debate, the roots of bathroom sex segregation go back over a century. When did segregated water fountains end? That's a good question, and it's a tough one to answer. Segregation of public facilities.
- From "When did segregated water fountains end?" by Ben Steelman in the Wilmington StarNews (June 5, 2009) "In one of his anecdotal books, 'Only in America,' [Harry] Golden said that he once persuaded a North Carolina department store owner to put an 'Out of Order' sign over his 'white' drinking fountain. They used separate restrooms, sat in separate sections on trains and buses and drank from separate water fountains. Even in death, Black and white people were buried in separate cemeteries.
This Article challenges two widely‐embraced theories about how public intimate spaces (e.g., toilets, locker rooms, showers, etc. hereinafter called "bathrooms") first became separated by sex. The first challenged theory claims that the very first instance of sex‐separation in public bathrooms occurred in 1739 at a ball held at a restaurant in Paris.
Under this first view, sex. The first gender-segregated public bathrooms afforded women privacy, safety, and autonomy-if, that is, the women were white and of means; otherwise, access to bathrooms served as a tool of segregation. The history of the women's bathrooms in the United States is a story of who does-and who doesn't.
