Most Americans imagine Jim Crow to be mostly about separation (separate schools, bathrooms, water fountains, etc). In truth, it was as much about white people stealing stuff from Black people (land, money, votes, power) as it was about policing public spaces. All of it was enforced by violence; sometimes sensational, more often than not ordinary and everyday, all of it brutal in its own way.

You can get a good sense of the map of Jim Crow America by going on a virtual tour of the Smithsonian Institution's exhibit on The Negro Motorist Green Book.

JET Magazine's coverage of 14-year-old Emmett Till's lynching in Mississippi in 1955, which, at his mother Mamie Till Mobley’s insistence, featured a photo of his mutilated corpse, "horrified the nation and became a catalyst for the bourgeoning civil rights movement.”

You should read Ta-Nehisi Coates's "The Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic (June 2014) to learn more about white supremacy as "plunder.”