The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow offers the first comprehensive look at race relations in America between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. This definitive four-part series documents a brutal and oppressive era rooted in the growing refusal of many Southern states to grant slaves freed in the Civil War equal rights with whites. A life of crushing limitation for Southern Blacks, defined by legal segregation known as "Jim Crow" - after a minstrel routine in which whites painted their faces black - shaped the social, political and legal history of the period. In 1954, with the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, the Jim Crow laws and way of life began to fall. The story of the struggle during this period is told through the eyes of those who experienced it, historical figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells and Walter White as well as everyday heroes.

Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865 - 1896)
How did Jim Crow begin? As Reconstruction ended, betraying the promises of Emancipation, African Americans' efforts to assert their constitutional rights began to be repressed at every turn by Southern whites embolden by the North's withdrawal of support for Black aspirations for land, civil and political rights, and due process. Whites succeeded in passing laws that segregated and disfranchised African-Americans -- laws that were enforced with violence and terror. This episode recounts the Black response by documenting the work of such leaders as anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and the emergence of Booker T. Washington as a national figure.

Narrated by Richard Roundtree.
Series Producer Richard Wormser
Story by Richard Wormser
Telescript by Bill Jersey
Produced by Sam Pollard
Directed by Bill Jersey
Executive Producers: Bill Jersey and William R. Grant

Program Two: Fighting Back (1896 - 1917)
Episode two illustrates the early rise of a successful Black middle class and the determination of white supremacists to destroy fledgling Black political power. The growing oppression had a profound effect on a professor at Atlanta University, W.E.B. Du Bois, and a teenage mail carrier named Walter White. Both would become leaders of a newly founded organization to fight Jim Crow: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The episode ends with the violence at home giving way to warfare abroad as thousands of Black Americans depart for battle in World War I.

Narrated by Richard Roundtree
Series Producer Richard Wormser
Written, Produced and Directed by Richard Wormser
Executive Producers: Bill Jersey and William R. Grant

Program Three: Don't Shout Too Soon (1917 - 1940)
A new round of race riots and lynching broke out in the aftermath of World War I, yet this was also a time of increasing strength for Black resistance movements. Episode three chronicles the years between the wars as a time of massive Black migration out of the South and continuing conflict within it. By the 1930's many African-Americans found their sole support from Socialists and Communists, who helped organize tenant farmers and sharecroppers and defended the "Scottsboro Boys," nine Black youths falsely accused of rape. While NAACP counsel Charles Houston began a lengthy legal campaign designed to chip away at Jim Crow, Walter White waged war in the court of public opinion. As the world plunged toward World War II, Black labor leaders like A. Philip Randolph demanded an end to segregation in defense industries. Singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson declared that, "Change is in the air."

Narrated by Richard Roundtree
Series Producer Richard Wormser
Written, Produced and Directed by Bill Jersey
Executive Producers: Bill Jersey and William R. Grant

Program Four: Terror and Triumph (1940 - 1954)
Episode four examines the surge of Black activism that took place after World War II. Black veterans returned from the war determined to achieve the same rights at home that they had fought for in Europe in a Jim Crow army. One vet, Medgar Evers, became an organizer for the Mississippi NAACP; he was assassinated for his work in 1963. In Georgia, John Wesley Dobbs, head of the Black Masons, organized the first voter-registration drives. Predictably, whites again answered Black demands for equality with violence. But this time, President Truman responded with a civil rights initiative and integrated the Army. Southern Democrats split from the Democratic Party forming the States Rights Party. Slowly the national mood was changing. Barriers fell in sports and entertainment. The NAACP legal team discovered in towns like Farmville, Virginia, cases that ultimately succeeded in challenging segregation in public schools. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision irreparably breached the legal basis for Jim Crow, and through that opening soon poured the legions of the Civil Rights Movement.

Narrated by Richard Roundtree
Series Producer Richard Wormser
Written and Directed by Bill Jersey and Richard Wormser
Produced by Richard Wormser, Bill Jersey and Sam Pollard
Executive Producers: Bill Jersey and William R. Grant

Winner 2003 Peabody Award


"This series highlights the richness and diversity of African American reactions to segregation, showing how even in the worst depths of racism, the struggle for freedom persisted."
--William H. Chafe
Duke University

"A thought-provoking documentary which will inspire viewers to re-examine our understanding of democracy as well as our thoughts about racism and social injustices. This is a film that all America should see because without comprehending its contents we have no way of fully understanding who we were and, by extension, who we are."
--James Anderson
University of Illinois

"A powerful and dramatic documentary on Black life under Jim Crow which captures its horrors, brutality and power in graphic detail while maintaining a central focus on how African Americans endured, resisted and challenged the system."
--Pat Sullivan
Harvard University

"The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow is an excellent series that serves as a top-notch prequel to the Eyes on the Prize series. Highly recommended."
--Video Librarian

"The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow should be mandatory in every classroom."
--Africana.com

"Highly recommended for school and public library collections."
--Booklist

Four Cassette Set
56 minutes each, 2002

A co-production of Quest Productions, VideoLine Productions and Thirteen/WNET New York. Major funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and The Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of its Diversity Initiative. Additional funding was provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The series' corporate sponsor is New York Life.

Video Purchase: $295
Order any 5 titles and save up to 50%!

Special Price for high schools, public libraries and community groups