This photo represents a woman and a child, both of whom refused to identify themselves. From African-American children who look through the fence at a playground legally forbidden for them to a white teenager who tears up the sign of a black protester, these photos of segregation will leave you breathless.

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African-American children look through the fence at a playground legally forbidden for them. Alabama. 1956.

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Two men drink from segregated water fountains.

Location and date unspecified

Elizabeth Eckford ignores the hostile screams and stares of fellow students on her first day of school. She was one of the nine African-American students whose integration into Arkansas’ Little Rock Central High School was ordered by a federal court following legal action by the NAACP. September 6, 1957.

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During the Freedom Riders’ travels throughout the South to protest segregated buses, one bus was set on fire by an angry mob. Luckily, everyone on the bus was able to escape without injury. Location unspecified. 1961.

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Fifteen-year-old Johnny Gray points a warning finger at one of the two white boys who tried to force him and his sister, Mary, from the sidewalk as they walked to school in Little Rock, Arkansas on September 16, 1958.

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Alabama Governor George Wallace stands at the door of the University of Alabama in protest of integration. June 11, 1963.

Warren K. Leffler/Wikimedia Commons

The spring of 1963 brought protest against police brutality and discrimination to Birmingham, Alabama. Police chief Bull Connor famously turned fire hoses on protesters, and used attack dogs and his own fists to physically beat unarmed people – including women and children.

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A nervous young girl sits in the front row. She is the only black girl in her newly integrated class. Tennessee. 1957.

Don Cravens/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Demonstrators protest against the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’ Central High School. 1959.

Wikimedia Commons

[Original caption] “Despite a court ruling on desegregating buses, white and blacks continue to be divided by their own choice.” Texas. 1956.

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A classroom sits nearly empty after white students refuse to attend their newly desegregated school. New York. 1964.

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Durham, North Carolina. 1940.

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African-American students arrive at Baltimore, Maryland’s newly integrated Southern High School as white students walk behind with a sign reading “Southern don’t want negroes.” 1954.

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Six-year-old Ruby Bridges is escorted from school by US Marshals. Bridges was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis in 1960.

Wikimedia Commons

A white woman hurriedly bars the way as African-American people were about to enter the lunch counter of this downtown department store in Memphis to protest the segregation policy of the establishment. 1961.

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Kenyan student David Mbiti encounters segregation for the first time in a bus terminal. Georgia. 1960.

Ted Russell/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

A boy drinks from a “colored” water fountain in Halifax, North Carolina. 1938.

John Vachon/Library of Congress

New York. Date unspecified.

New York Public Library

Inside an all-black classroom. Virginia. 1953.

Hank Walker/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

A young man drinks from a “colored” at a streetcar terminal. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 1939.

Russell Lee/Library of Congress

Instead of employing a separate entrance, some entire establishments were simply designated for “colored people.” Mississippi. Circa 1937.

Dorothea Lange/Library of Congress

To gain access to the “colored” entrance of this theater, you’d better be able to ascend an outdoor flight of stairs. Mississippi. 1939.

Marion Post Wolcott/Wikimedia Commons

Demonstrators picketing over lunch counter segregation. Georgia. 1960.

Donald Uhrbrock/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

A white teenager tears up the sign of a black protestor picketing variety stores protesting their segregation policies. Tallahassee, Florida. 1960.

Underwood Archives/Getty Image