American Nightmare The History of Jim Crow

For most of the hundred years following the Civil War, a quarter of America lived under Jim Crow, a system of legalized segre-gation that meticulously governed race relations. Its function was simple: to force black submission to the perceived racial super-iority of the white majority. Rivaling South Africa's apartheid for the humiliation and degradation it heaped upon a people, the scars of Jim Crow are still etched across the American psyche. The author of seven celebrated works of nonfiction, Packard brings a practiced historian's viewpoint to a phenomenon that surpasses credulity.

Jerrold Packard has written serveral books on a variety of historical subjects. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.