The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African-Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. Exceeding even South Africa's notorious apartheid in the humiliation, degradation, and suffering it brought, Jim Crow left scars on the American psyche that are still felt today.

American Nightmare examines and explains Jim Crow from its beginnings to its end: how it came into being, how it was lived, how it was justified, and how, at long last, it was overcome only a few short decades ago. Most important, this book reveals how a nation founded on principles of equality and freedom came to enact as law a pervasive system of inequality and virtual slavery.

Packard, who has written seven wide-ranging works of nonfiction, examines an aspect of our past that surpasses credulity for those who didn't experience it. Although America has finally consigned Jim Crow to the historical graveyard, Packard shows why it is important that this scourge -- and an understanding of how it happened -- must remain alive in the nation's collective memory.