The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

While searching for new podcasts for my iPhone, I discovered a FREE and interesting podcast. "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow" is a podcast, which provides actual people - not famous people - discussing their very personal interaction with Jim Crow during a time that racial segregation was the nature of life. This podcast is phenomenal. It includes actual experiences during the Jim Crow Era. To find this podcast on in the iTunes Store, you may search under PBS sponsored podcasts.

This discovery prompted me to search PBS site for Jim Crow references. The search results contained:

1. Interactive Maps


2. Teen Leadership Lessons


3. Games and Activities


4. Interactive Timeline


5. Lesson Plans


6. Resources

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow is an actual series showing on PBS. Unfortunately for me the series doesn't air on my local MPB channel. I was sadly disappointed to see this. Check out the series schedule to see if it is showing in your area soon.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow PBS website contains so much information, but what really caught my attention was the actual access to rare documents, videos, photos, and actual interviews with people, who experienced the impulsive control of Jim Crow. There is also a forum area for discussions.

The Term Jim Crow

According to Ronald L. F. Davis, Ph. D. at California State University, "The term Jim Crow originated in a song performed by Daddy Rice, a white minstrel show entertainer in the 1830s. Rice covered his face with charcoal paste or burnt cork to resemble a black man, and then sang and danced a routine in caricature of a silly black person. By the 1850s, this Jim Crow character, one of several stereotypical images of black inferiority in the nation's popular culture, was a standard act in the minstrel shows of the day. How it became a term synonymous with the brutal segregation and disfranchisement of African Americans in the late nineteenth-century is unclear. What is clear, however, is that by 1900, the term was generally identified with those racist laws and actions that deprived African Americans of their civil rights by defining blacks as inferior to whites, as members of a caste of subordinate people."

You can find more at The History of Jim Crow website. ~ J. W. Ward, Jr., Ph. D.

Image Gallery here. Teacher Resources here. ~ Maggie