In the US during the Jim Crow era—a period of racial apartheid and near slavery conditions for many black people via sharecropping, which lasted from post-Civil War reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s—water fountains were separated by ‘white’ and ‘colored’; a black person drinking from the white fountain was a criminal offense. American history textbooks often have photos of children or teens drinking from a fountain that says ‘WHITES ONLY’, so it’s a trope most Americans are familiar with.