Purdue University had black graduates by the 1890s. In 1905 a black man ran for its track team. At some point in the 1910's the teams were segregated (they remained so until a student protest in 1947). Black students were not allowed to live in the residence halls until the 1940's. Black males were able to live in cooperatives, but black females were not allowed to live anywhere in West Lafayette.
In 1946 the women's dormitories at Purdue were integrated by an order of the governor of Indiana.[4][5]
Although in theory, the "equal" segregation doctrine was extended to public facilities and transportation, facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to facilities for white Americans; sometimes, there were no facilities for the black community at all. As a body of law, Jim Crow institutionalized economic, educational, political and social disadvantages and second class citizenship for most African Americans living in the United States. After the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909, it became involved in a sustained public protest and campaigns against the Jim Crow laws.