The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross | Racist Images in Jim Crow Era | PBS

Racist images in the Jim Crow era were used as propaganda to send messages that demeaned African-Americans and legitimized violence against them. Episode four of "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr." airs on PBS on Tuesday, Nov. 12 at 8/7c. For more, visit: http://www.pbs.org/manyrivers/ The images and stereotypes used to represent African-Americans changed with the times. As historian David Levering Lewis explains, white America's representations of African-Americans were quite different before and after the Civil War.