Brutal slavery existed all over the New World, but why did America follow emancipation with a twisted system of segregation? Searching for answers, Daniel Brook journeys to the places that resisted Jim Crow the longest, and discovered that in the cosmopolitan port cities of New Orleans and Charleston, integrated streetcars plied avenues patrolled by police forces of various races for decades after the Civil War. This progress was ushered in during Reconstruction when long-free, openly biracial communities joined in coalition with former slaves and their allies. As Brook also explains, their victories—including integrated schools—were uprooted by segregation along a stark, new black-white color line.