Segregation

As a foreigner, there's a couple of things that I do not understand and that are quite puzzling about this country. One of these (and probably the greatest one) is the issue of segregation and racial prejudice in the United States until not really long ago. You can't really understand the scope of this problem unless you live among the people who suffered because of it and before you study the history. As I was researching my project, I discovered that no institution (not eve Rollins) was untouched by this institution. How did this happen? I must say that in some countries, Americans are thought of as racist-nationalist individuals who base their wealth on exploiting people they consider inferior. As I researched the history of the library, I came across documents that demonstrated me that most people did not agree with segregation and were quietly waiting to bring down the walls of racial separation. The library is an ode to such ideal, yet at the same time it's a monument to the continuation of a separate system instead of integration. Was the library created to decrease the separation between black and white communities in order to smooth up the path to integration or was it a way to justify the concept of "separate but equal"?