Question

Discuss three themes that emerge from the documentary "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Part 1". The documentary is available in web links. Number each and provide at least three sentence under each theme. A theme is not description of an event.

Answer 1

THE RISE AND FALL OF JIM CROW explores segregation from the end of the civil war to the dawn of the modern civil rights movement.

1.) Promises Betrayed

The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction, periods that held so much promise for free black men and women. But as the North gradually withdrew its support for black aspirations for land, civil and political rights, and legal due process, Southern whites succeeded in passing laws that segregated and disfranchised African Americans, laws that were reinforced with violence and terror tactics.

2) fighting back

The second theme explores the dramatic rise of a successful black middle class and the determination of white supremacists to destroy this fledgling black political power. Through the efforts of men and women like educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown, African Americans continued to move forward.

3) Don't shout too soon

Theme 3 chronicles the years between World Wars I and II, a time of increased mob violence, lynchings, and massacres of blacks. White supremacy was kept in place by terrorism,but three men, each part of the fledgling NAACP, led campaigns to confront these threats. W.E.B. Du Bois called for veterans of World War I to "return fighting." Walter White went among the lynchers to discover the truth behind the rapes and insurrections allegedly committed by blacks, and Charles Hamilton Houston designed and successfully applied a legal strategy that challenged Jim Crow and resulted in the famous "Brown vs. Board of Education" decision, which desegregated public schools in 1954.