American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow

For a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under a system of legalized segregation called Jim Crow.

Together with its rigidly enforced canon of racial "etiquette," these rules governed nearly every aspect of life―and outlined draconian punishments for infractions.The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status.