The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

Episode 2: Fighting Back (1896-1917)

October 8, 2002 • 56 min

As a successful black middle class arises, white supremacists are determined to destroy its political power, but educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown is among those helping African Americans continue to move forward. Black artists create new genres of American music. An intellectual elite typified by W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of the NAACP magazine THE CRISIS, emerges. Violence at home yields to warfare abroad as thousands of black Americans depart for World War I.