In this episode, Adolph Reed Jr. describes Jim Crow as the result of decades of post-emancipation contention between freed slaves, white farmers and laborers, and the ruling class of white planters and merchants. As an outgrowth of that contestation in various precincts of the South, Jim Crow’s rules and applications varied sometimes significantly by locale. In his new book, The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, Reed describes his own interaction with these shifting, very often treacherous, rules as a way to explore power alignments that shaped Jim Crow and continue to shape its afterlives.