jimcrowhistory.org is an educator's site that presents teachers with new historical resources and teaching ideas on one of the most shameful periods in American history, an era of segregation, violence, and disfranchisement of African Americans that tore at the very fabric of the nation.

Web Awards: Jimcrowhistory.org has been awarded the Golden and Platinum Web Awards from the International Association of Webmasters and Designers, and the Independent Ultraweb Level 3 Award.

The History of Jim Crow (www.jimcrowhistory.org) is a wonderful Web site that provides a wealth of historical and pedagogical materials on the segregation and the disfranchisement of African Americans from Reconstruction through the modern civil rights movement. The site was produced in conjunction with the PBS documentary The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow and is divided into five sections. One provides teachers guides to the four-part television series, while another includes brief overview essays on the origins, transformation, and end of Jim Crow. Three of the overviews are accompanied by in-depth essays that include hyperlinks to esoteric terms and concepts and to biographies of key figures and summaries of events. The geography section is particularly well designed. The content is organized in a series of interactive maps showing, among other things, Jim Crow laws in and outside of the South, patterns of lynchings, the locations of formative Supreme Court decisions on civil rights, and African American pioneers in the sporting world.

These content sections provide a range of historical materials in a clear and interesting Web design, yet clearly it is the teaching resources that set this Web site apart. The "Jim Crow and Literature" segment has detailed lesson plans for ten novels. These range from a nine-week unit on Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, (1960) that is geared toward middle school students to an essay-based exercise analyzing literary reviews of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1947) that could fit easily into an undergraduate syllabus. The bulk of the materials in the separate teaching resources segment are suited for middle school and high school students; still, the variety is impressive. They include lesson plans, module exercises, first-person written histories of life under Jim Crow, and an image gallery. Also, a gateway to other Jim Crow web sites features concise commentary and critiques by practicing teachers. The teaching modules are excellent. They challenge students to analyze primary source documents, role-play as historical actors, and make historically informed predictions. PDF links accompany the lesson plans, allowing for easy incorporation into the classroom.

The History of Jim Crow also does well in using the unique interactive qualities of the Web to help revise and build the materials offered here. A section on the "Jim Crow Press" provides brief histories of African American-owned or -operated newspapers in various states. Many of the lesser-known newspapers are merely listed, and visitors are encouraged to do their own research to help build the archive. Most pages include a link "Do You Have Another Opinion?" in which visitors are encouraged to send in comments, corrections, or competing interpretations of the material presented.

--Joseph Crespino, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia