Civil Rights and Segregation: 21 Striking Color Photographs Capture Everyday Life in South Carolina in the 1950s

Segregation, the residential, political, and social isolation of African Americans, was accomplished in South Carolina by a long and varying effort in the aftermath of slavery. The de facto, or socially based, segregation of the races was channeled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries into a rigid legal, or de jure, system that effectively enforced the second-class citizenship of African Americans. As all-encompassing as the system of “Jim Crow” came to be in South Carolina, it was constructed through a slow and halting process, which black Carolinians contested at every turn.

In late 1956, over the course of several months, LIFE published what the magazine itself described as "a series of major articles on the background of the crisis brought about by the school segregation decision [Brown v. Board of Education] of the Supreme Court... Although the ground that is to be covered in the series is not wholly new to Americans, it is unfamiliar as a subject of moderate and unprejudiced consideration."

The series in question, ambitiously and simply titled The Background of Segregation, explored the emotionally and politically charged issue at a time when the Civil Rights movement was barely in its infancy. For one especially riveting (then, as now) segment of the monumental five-part series, "Voices of the White South," LIFE dispatched the legendary Margaret Bourke-White to Greenville, South Carolina, where she documented citizens from varying walks of life who wholeheartedly—and unapologetically—supported the legacy and the practice of open, legal segregation.

Here, in striking color photographs that, at times, convey an unsettling intimacy, Bourke-White's work opens a window on an era that, for better and for worse, helped define 20th-century America.

African-American maid prepares a white family's supper

Children play in a segregated neighborhood

Young girls listen attentively in a sewing class

Home inspection in a black neighborhood

Generations pass the time on a porch

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12 Harrowing Vintage Photos of Soldiers in Complete Shell Shock

“They were very pathetic, these shell shocked boys.”

Shell shock is a phrase coined in World War I to describe the type of posttraumatic stress disorder many soldiers were afflicted with during the war. It is reaction to the intensity of the bombardment and fighting that produced a helplessness appearing variously as panic and being scared, or flight, an inability to reason, sleep, walk or talk.

During the War, the concept of shell shock was ill-defined. Cases of 'shell shock' could be interpreted as either a physical or psychological injury, or simply as a lack of moral fibre. The term shell shock is still used by the Veterans Administration to describe certain parts of PTSD but mostly it has entered into popular imagination and memory, and is often identified as the signature injury of the War.

In World War II and thereafter, diagnosis of 'shell shock' was replaced by that of combat stress reaction, a similar but not identical response to the trauma of warfare and bombardment.

These photos of soldiers with shell shock are some of the most disturbing pictures of war, for they show a side of war not often discussed – the mental toll it takes on soldiers after it is all said and done.

1. The Eyes Of Madness.

France, September 15, 1916

2. Patient Suffering From 'War Neuroses' As Shell Shock Was Referred To

World War I

3. The Thousand-Yard Stare Of A Young Marine

Marshall Islands, February 1944

4. US Patrol Team Leader In Vietnam

Vietnam, 1968

5. Soviet Soldier Stares Blankly Into The Distance

World War II

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25 Colorized Portrait Pictures of Tokyo Geishas From Between the 1900s and 1910s

Geisha are traditional Japanese female entertainers who act as hostesses. Their skills include performing various arts such as classical music, dance, games, and conversation, traditionally to entertain male customers, but also female customers today.

These colorized photos from Blue Ruin 1 that show portrait of Tokyo geishas from between 1900s and 1910s.

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A Collection of Bizarre Halloween Postcards From the Early 20th Century

Halloween is coming and greeting postcards are indispensable in this occasion. In this article, we want to bring to you an interesting and bizarre Halloween postcard collection from the early 20th century.

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Behind the Scenes Photos of Gene Simmons in a Studio Session in New York City, May 1980

In the spring of 1980, just after the release of their eighth studio album Unmasked, guitarist and co-lead singer Gene Simmons of American hard rock band KISS visited a cramped New York studio in full Demon garb, axe in hand, for a photo shoot with a narrow backdrop and a very patient makeup artist.

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One Potato, Two Potato (1957)

This footage was filmed in London in 1957 and shows a group of boys performing the well-known counting out rhyme ‘One Potato, Two Potato’. According to Roud this rhyme was the most widely popular rhyme in England in the mid-twentieth century and can be traced back to the 1940s, although it is probable that the rhyme existed before this.

(© BFI)

Rare Photographs of Victoria Beckham From a 1992 Photoshoot

Back in the early '90s, before becoming a member of the Spice Girls, Victoria was just your typical pretty face looking for a big break. In 1991, the young brunette from Hertfordshire, England, entered the Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom, Surrey, where she would train in dance and modeling.

These rare photos of Victoria were captured just a year later, and two years before she would known to the world as "Posh Spice". From humble beginnings to her contemporary stardom, hit the thumbs for a collection of Victoria Beckham when she was just 18-years-old.

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