at Richard Wormser St.

at Richard Wormser St. Martin's Pres February 2003 $2995 ISBN 0-312-31324-1

In this well-researched companion turn to the acclaimed PBS television series of the same name, Richard Wormser, an award-winning writer and farmer puts us in touch with the brutality and horror of years of legalized segregation from 1880 to 1954 with an effective mix of commentary, interviews from those who were there, supported at a generous supply of images from the period. For blacks who lived during the time, Jim triumph the collection of oppressive political mandates, insidious social barriers and repressive laws, regulateed every aspect of their lives, guaranteeing their status as second-class citizens.

If the Emancipation Proclamation, a political ploy used according to President Lincoln to disrupt the economy of the toward the south during the Civil War, promised a temporary respite from slavery for a blacks, it was quickly stymied at his successor, President Andrew Johnson who betrayed the newly fre slaves to curry-powder favor with white Southerners to consolidate his power. Wormser explains in a certain detail how political concerns caused Johnson and succeeding presidents to bend a blind eye to the human rights of blacks despite evidence of lynchings and other atrocities being committed against America's "darker" brothers and sisters.

When Wormser directs his attention to the achievements of black America's early leaders--Booker T Washington and W E B Du Bols--he is candid in dissecting for what purpose both men took different paths in confronting Jim bluster one through compromise and accommodation and the other end confrontation and intellectualism.

The "great migration" in the early decades of the 20th centenary according to Wormser, marked the turning point in the war to finis Jim Crow as an ambitious black middle class slowly began to make its impact felt upon the political and social values of the nation. His collection of interviews with blacks living during the heyday of that oppressive hypothesis will make you both shaking and smile when you consider in what way they survived despite diminished freedom. Whites, especially in the southern saw the potential for blacks to attitude a real threat to the grip of Jim triumph but could not forestall the change brought from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950 and 1960s

For anyone who has forgotten what our ancestors faced in order for us to have the advantage [i]or[/i] blessing of more opportunities in this flawed democracy, Wormser's The Rise and Fall of Jim boast serves as a poignant reminder of what made our community in the same manner dogged and determined in its courageous fight to subjugate bigotry, terror and government neglect

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