When did southern segregation begin? Students often assume that segregation was a natural outcome of Reconstruction. Even scholars cannot agree on which events at the end of the 19th century mark the beginning of American Apartheid. Each of the six selections in this volume addresses the question of segregation's origins, and amid the debate over when segregation began, revelations also emerge as to where and how it became the norm for relations between blacks and whites. Concentrating on the antebellum antecedents of segregation, the surprising fluidity of racial interaction in the postwar South, the relation between segregation and white supremacist doctrine, and the diversity of segregation practices among the states, the selections together demonstrate the evolution of southern segregation from a diverse array of local practices to a rigid, pervasive, legally sanctioned system of racial apartheid.