Between the Civil War of the 1860s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s African Americans suffered widespread discrimination based on racial segregation laws. This series traces the origins, growth and downfall of this "Jim Crow" system. Th e roots of Jim Crow in Southern Reconstruction after the Civil War, and Black responses to disenfranchisement and violence by Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington and others are recounted in this first episode Director Bill Jersey; narrator Richard Roundtr ee.