"It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectively separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment. "

Black people were also forced to use different barbers, nurses and jail cells. The segregation between black people and white people was evident and enforced by law. These laws were called Jim Crow Laws, and were local laws that outlined the segregation between black people and white people. Any act against a Jim Crow law was punishable by law and received an unusually hefty punishment. These 'separate but equal' approaches lead to much discrimination that African-American communities endured for much of the decade. These laws covered aspects such as barbers, prisons, nurses, and libraries. Some examples of Jim Crow laws were:

1. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia). 

2. No person or corporation shall require any White female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which Negro men are placed (Alabama). 

3. The warden shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both eating and sleeping from the Negro convicts (Mississippi). 

Although these laws were all forced by law, they were all forced by the public as well. Many mobs of white men used lynching in the 1960s to try and manipulate the African-American population. Lynching is considered the punishment of any person without legal process or authority. Any person who tried to promote against, abolish, or defy the Jim Crow laws were often beaten and/or killed. With the help of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, these laws were only in effect up until 1965. In 1968 the Supreme Court declared all types of segregation 'unconstitutional'. 

Hairspray is set in 1960. In 1960s Baltimore, dance-loving teen Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) auditions for a spot on "The Corny Collins Show" and wins. She becomes an overnight celebrity, a trendsetter in dance, fun and fashion. Perhaps her new status as a teen sensation is enough to topple Corny's reigning dance queen and bring racial integration to the show.