American Life in the Jim Crow South is a major research project into the history of African American life during the age of Jim Crow, roughly the period from the 1890s to the 1950s. The Jim Crow era was a time of undeniable oppression and exploitation of black Americans. However, these sixty years of legal segregation in the American South also represented a time when African Americans made monumental efforts to build their own communities and institutions, resisted discrimination in ways large and small despite personal risk, and put their ineluctable mark on American culture.

The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.