The central issue in Separate Pasts is the historical legacy of racial segregation in the United States. Racial segregation describes the legal and social enforced separation of African Americans from Caucasians. Segregation dictated where African Americans could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. McLaurin describes discrimination as an unthinking part of Southern life, writing that “race, then, was something I rarely thought about and never pondered” (31).

Segregation followed the Reconstruction Era (1863-1877), a period of increased civil rights for African Americans. Following the surrender of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, several legislative changes were enacted. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 required that Southern states enfranchise former slaves before they could be admitted into the union, transforming Southern society. The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment made freed slaves citizens, and the 15th Amendment granted the right to vote. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 banned racial segregation in accommodations.

Many Southerners reacted violently to these changes. McLaurin identifies the period between the end of Reconstruction and the establishment of segregation in North Carolina as contentious and marked by racial strife. By the turn of the 20th century, segregation, popularly known as the Jim Crow laws, was established in the South.