Read these excerpted texts from the narratives below on the following topics: The Church, Segregated Education, Sharecropping, Jim Crow Etiquette, Pearls of Wisdom.

For additional first-person experiences of life under Jim Crow, visit http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow, the official PBS companion site to the series.

Lalita Tademy
Best-selling author Lalita Tademy gives an historical account of the legacy of slavery during the Jim Crow era.

Oswald P. Bronson, Sr.
President of Bethune-Cookman College, Dr. Oswald P. Bronson remembers Mary McLeod Bethune, his days in college, and his perspective now as president of his alma mater.

Roceal Duke
D.C. Public Schools Content Specialist Roceal Duke remembers growing up and Jim Crow in the shadows of the nation's capital.

Susan Huetteman
Retired teacher Susan Huetteman offers various childhood memories of Illinois and Jim Crow in the 30s and 40s.

Annie Zachery
Murfreesboro, TN resident Annie Zachery offers her unique perspective of having taught school both under Jim Crow and after Brown v. Board of Ed.

Edgar Williams
North Carolina native Edgar Williams shares his frustrations and triumphs as a sharecropper in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

Thelma Williams
Natchez resident Thelma Williams recalls her youth in Louisiana in the 30s and 40s, and shares her life perspective in the 21st Century. Issues to ponder are also included for students.

Clifford Boxley
Natchez, MS, resident Clifford Boxley offers his candid recollections of interfacing with white people in the Jim Crow South of the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Willie Wallace
Natchez resident Willie Wallace shares the recollections of his youth and early adulthood in the 40s and 50s, on the cusp of the Civil Rights era.

Fred Page
Historic National Parks docent Fred Page talks about navigating Jim Crow on his family's sharecropping farm and as a tour guide for one of Mississippi's plantations.

Ralph Jennings
Ralph Jennings remembers his father's teachings and growing up in the town of Natchez, MS in the 1940s and 50s.

R. C. Hickman
Dallas-based photographer R.C. Hickman recalls his early days in the profession. Also see his photo collection in the Image Gallery.

Edith Veitch Farris
Retired teacher Edith Veitch Farris remembers her white upbringing in various states in the 40s and 50s.

Nobuo Honda
Nobuo Honda, a third-generation Japanese American from Hawaii, remembers his first encounter with Jim Crow in Georgia, 1951.

Ronald Davis
Professor Ronald Davis remembers his white upbringing in Missouri in the 40s and 50s.

Joseph Holloway
California history professor Joseph Holloway recounts a lynching he witnessed while driving through Texas in the early 60s.

Theodore Roosevelt (T.R.) Davidson
T.R. Davidson was graduated from the Tuskegee Institute, where he was a member of the 1868 Aviation Engineers and performed as an electrician, aviation maintenance man, and various other MOS's. In addition, he studied and became a flight instructor at Tennessee State College. In this narrative, Davidson talks about growing up, studying, and working in the South, as well the various manifestation of black/white relationships during Jim Crow.

Ed Brantley
Edward Brantley is a former airman and flight crew chief in the U.S. Air Force and retired Deputy Sheriff. In this narrative, he describes the effects of racism on his quest to become an airman and how his self-respect and passion for flying allowed him to overcome these obstacles.

Levi H. Thornhill
A member of the Tuskegee Airmen's 302nd fighter squadron, Levi H. Thornhill served overseas during World War II as a propeller specialist and P-47 crew chief. After the War, he graduated in rank from Staff Sergeant to Cadet Lieutenant. In this narrative, Thornhill looks back at his experiences before, during, and after the War--in particular, he explores racial relations before and after the armed forces were integrated.

Roger "Bill" Terry
Roger "Bill" Terry, a native of Southern California, earned his pilot's wings at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama during World War II. In this narrative, Terry describes his experience in the Jim Crow South, how it altered his outlook and led him to fight discrimination in the Armed Forces. He is a college graduate from UCLA, received his law degree from Southwestern University, and served as the President of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Joan Johns Cobb
In 1951, Barbara Rose Johns, a 16 year old black high school girl in Prince Edward County, Virginia, led her classmates in a strike to protest the substandard conditions at Robert Russa Moton High School. Enlisting NAACP lawyers Spotswood Robinson and Oliver Hill to her cause, the lawyers filed suit at the federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia demanding using the Moton High School case to end segregated schools in Virginia. They lost. In their appeal the lawyers incorporated the Moton case with three other similar suits that became known as Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. Today, Moton High School, the scene of Barbara Johns' walkout, is a historic landmark and civil rights museum. Barbara Johns died in 1991. Joan Johns Cobb is her younger sister. In this passage Mrs. Cobb recounts the events leading up to the student strike.