The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002) provides a thorough overview of Jim Crow and the black response to it. The four-hour documentary explores the history of segregation from emancipation through World War II, chronicling both its formal and informal manifestations in the South and beyond. The second and third episodes, which examine the black experience from Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 through the start of the NAACP’s school desegregation campaign in the 1930s, is particularly useful for establishing the movement’s precursors and preconditions. [Description by Hasan Kwame Jeffries.]