The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Don’t Shoot Too Soon (1918–1940)

Episode 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.