<P> In addition to encouraging white families to move to suburbs by providing them loans to do so, the government uprooted many established African American communities by building elevated highways through their neighborhoods . To build a highway, tens of thousands of single - family homes were destroyed . Because these properties were summarily declared to be "in decline," families were given pittances for their properties, and were forced into federal housing called "the projects ." To build these projects, still more single family homes were demolished . </P> <P> President Woodrow Wilson did not oppose segregation practices by autonomous department heads of the federal Civil Service, according to Brian J. Cook in his work, Democracy And Administration: Woodrow Wilson's Ideas And The Challenges Of Public Management . White and black people would sometimes be required to eat separately, go to separate schools, use separate public toilets, park benches, train, buses, and water fountains, etc . In some locales, in addition to segregated seating, it could be forbidden for stores or restaurants to serve different races under the same roof . </P> <P> Public segregation was challenged by individual citizens on rare occasions but had minimal impact on civil rights issues, until December, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to be moved to the back of a bus for a white passenger . Parks' civil disobedience had the effect of sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott . Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation . </P> <P> Segregation was also pervasive in housing . State constitutions (for example, that of California) had clauses giving local jurisdictions the right to regulate where members of certain races could live . In 1917, the Supreme Court in the case of Buchanan v. Warley declared municipal resident segregation ordinances unconstitutional . In response, whites resorted to the restrictive covenant, a formal deed restriction binding white property owners in a given neighborhood not to sell to blacks . Whites who broke these agreements could be sued by "damaged" neighbors . In the 1948 case of Shelley v. Kraemer, the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that such covenants were unenforceable in a court of law . However, residential segregation patterns had already become established in most American cities, and have often persisted up to the present (see white flight and Redlining). </P>

What was the last state to abolish segregation