The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (documentary; four VHS videotapes).

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (documentary; four VHS videotapes). Produced, directed, and written by Sam Pollard, Richard Wormser, and Bill Jersey. A co-production of Quest Productions, VideoLine Productions, and Thirteen/WNET New York. (Distributed by California Newsreel, South Burlington, Vt., 2002. 224 minutes, $295.00.)

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part documentary series examining African Americans' struggle for justice and equality from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the announcement of the historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954, fills an important void in documentary coverage of African American history. While there are acclaimed documentaries on the history of slavery and on the civil rights movement of the 1960s, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow offers the first comprehensive look at the era in American history when segregation became legalized across the South. Although the documentary makes occasional reference to events in the northern United States, the focus of the series is on conditions in the South, where legalized segregation was entrenched and where the majority of African Americans lived prior to World War II.

While The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow does not offer a new interpretation of the history of segregation, it does synthesize and put into visual form the important work done by such prominent historians as Paula Giddings, David Levering Lewis, and Nell Irvin Painter. Like the work of these renowned historians, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow tells the story of blacks' struggle for freedom "from the bottom up," through the lives of those who experienced it. As a result, the documentary features the stories of less well known actors in this historic struggle, including Alex Manly, an African American newspaper publisher in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Ned Cobb, a black tenant farmer who was sent to prison as a result of his participation in the Communist-led Sharecroppers Union, in addition to the stories of such recognized figures as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Ida B. Wells.

What makes The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow exceptional as a documentary is its skillful layering of firsthand accounts, historical commentary, and rich images to explain a complex era in American history. The documentary includes scores of interviews with participants in the struggle for civil rights and draws heavily on diaries, newspaper articles, and memoirs written by those who witnessed this historic struggle. The images used in the documentary are striking in their variety, in their visual impact, and in their sheer number. From shocking photographs of lynching victims and of Ku Klux Klan gatherings to captivating images of newly freed slaves on Edisto Island, South Carolina, and of ordinary African Americans going about their daily lives, the visuals in The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow give a face to African Americans' struggle for freedom. The documentary also has two companion websites, http://www. jimcrowhistory.org and http://www.pbs.org/wneffjimcrow, that offer additional oral and written histories, photographs, and film clips. This multimedia approach to telling history is part of a small but significant and growing trend in historical scholarship that utilizes new technologies to reach a broader audience.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow is divided into four parts, the first covering the years from 1865 to 1896, the second from 1896 to 1917, the third from 1917 to 1940, and the fourth from 1940 to 1954. Each part carefully balances stories of violence perpetrated against African Americans and of actions taken by African Americans to overcome the obstacles they faced. The first program, "Promises Betrayed," focuses on the promises and ultimate failures of Reconstruction, including the short-lived Freedmen's Bureau and the rise of Booker T. Washington. Program Two, "Fighting Back," examines the gradual erosion of blacks' civil rights, including the process of disfranchisement, the Wilmington and Atlanta race riots, the spread of the convict-lease system, and the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which formalized and legalized the practice of "'separate but equal." The second program also explores African Americans' accomplishments during this period, from the artistic achievements of jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton to the expanding sense of community fostered by the growing membership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The documentary loses no momentum as it enters its third hour, titled "Don't Shout Too Soon." This third program begins with African Americans' demands for equality in the wake of their participation in World War I and explores how these demands sparked racial conflicts across the country, including the race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The documentary takes an engaging look at the growing influence of the NAACP and explores the tireless efforts of W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter White, and Charles Hamilton Houston to expose the inequalities faced by African Americans. Shifting from the documentary's focus on the South, the third program also examines the experiences of African Americans in the North, discussing the rise of the "New Negro" and the growing importance of Harlem. The fourth and final program in the series, "Terror and Triumph," returns its focus to the South, closely examining life for African Americans under the system of legalized segregation during and after World War II. The strength of this fourth episode lies in its extensive use of oral histories from people who experienced life under Jim Crow, both on the home front and on the battlefront. The program demonstrates that while blacks' growing demands for civil rights in the wake of World War II led to some important victories, they also sparked an explosion of brutality and violence by white southerners. As with every episode in the series, the fourth succeeds in displaying the striking contradictions of the era--the 1940s were the heyday of Eugene Talmadge, the Dixiecrats, and Strom Thurmond, but at the same time the decade marked the emerging court battle that would lead to the triumph of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision ordering the desegregation of public schools.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow brings alive a critical era in American history, illuminating the transition from slavery to freedom for African Americans and offering a solid foundation for understanding the outpouring of black protest during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The documentary does a masterful job of balancing horrifying stories of violence against African Americans during what some have called the "nadir" in the history of race relations in the United States with powerful stories of blacks' achievements and triumphs in the face of oppression. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow is a stunning multimedia resource that offers viewers a new and engaging way to understand a complex and troubling period in American history.

LOUISE P. MAXWELL

Montclair, New Jersey