With Reconstruction gone, a new system of racial control took its place. This episode explores the rise of Jim Crow — the network of laws, customs, and violence that locked African Americans into second-class status for nearly a century. We'll look at how segregation crept into every corner of life: schools, trains, neighborhoods, even water fountains. Through the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, "separate but equal" became the cruel law of the land. Yet, amid oppression, Black communities built their own institutions — churches, businesses, newspapers — planting the early seeds of resistance that would one day fuel the Civil Rights Movement.