The original "Jim Crow" figure was a white minstrel actor who exaggerated Black behavior to entertain audiences.

A dart game featuring a caricature of a Black child (c. 1900).

Convict laborers working on the construction of the Texas State Capitol (c. 1885).

In Newport News, Virginia, a prison chain gang repairs city streets (c. 1901).

The Rex Theater, a movie house in Leland, Mississippi (c. 1939).

Inside Clune's Broadway Theater in Los Angeles, a 775-seat movie house and the site of the premiere screening of The Birth of a Nation.

A headline from the Cleveland Advocate, September 25th, 1915.

Booker T. Washington standing speaking before a Black audience in Lakeland, Florida (c. 1900).

Historian, writer, and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois.

A family of Southern migrants headed north to Chicago (c. 1919).

Jack Johnson, the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World.