''I'm not ashamed of the segregated and Jim Crow experience because we were able to devise techniques for survival,'' W. W. Law says. ''That permitted us to bide our time and to wait until change come.''

Mr. Law, a historian and civil rights leader from Georgia who died this year at 79, is one of the impassioned witnesses who bring vibrant life to ''The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow,'' a remarkable four-part documentary that begins tonight on PBS. Mr. Law may not have been ashamed, but shame is part of the stew of emotions a viewer is apt to feel during this series. Spanning the 91 years from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, it explores the burden of segregation, injustice and violence borne by blacks.

This story is told with restraint, and the emphasis is on the struggle's heroes, some of whom may be unfamiliar. But this is no dispassionate history lesson. It is an indictment, a narrative of broken promises and stolen hopes. No shred of sympathy is spared for anyone, black or white, who was less than committed to change. These four hours offer a stark reminder of some of the flaws in the American experiment.

The series, written and directed by Richard Wormser and Bill Jersey, is surely preaching to the choir. Those who choose to watch it tonight -- instead of the baseball playoffs, ''N.Y.P.D. Blue'' or a cable movie -- may not be those who would benefit most from its message. Still, this is public television doing its duty with distinction.

After reminding you that Jim Crow was a vicious caricature created by a white minstrel, tonight's installment covers the years from Reconstruction to the emergence of the educator Booker T. Washington as the most famous black man in America.

Not long after the Civil War, the hopes of the freed slaves for better lives were largely dashed. ''The way white supremacists made sure ex-slaves would fall back into place, or nearly back into place, was terror,'' the Princeton historian Nell Painter says, emphasizing the last word as ''ter-roar.'' There is music in the words of many of the series's scholars and survivors.

The four hours include chilling descriptions and unbearable pictures of lynchings, some well into the 20th century. A third-generation Klansman recalls one he attended as a child, describing the hanging as matter-of-factly as if it had been a football game. To Vernon Jarrett, a journalist, ritualized lynching of blacks had ''religious and patriotic connotations,'' a worship of segregation.

Despite the odds, determined black leaders emerged, fostering real progress, like Pap Singleton, who led 300 blacks out of the South to Kansas in the 1870's. Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881, emphasizing useful trades, not academic rigor. He accepted segregation, to the relief of his white benefactors, declaring that blacks needed ''to earn a dollar in a factory,'' not ''spend a dollar in an opera house.''

Washington's halo has tarnished. But the series describes heroes who are still revered, like Charles Hamilton Houston, the lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. who painstakingly built the strategies that led, after his death, to the Brown decision. Among the other black figures, flawed and otherwise, who come into focus during these programs are Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. DuBois and Walter White, as well as a parade of white politicians from Lincoln to Strom Thurmond.

Though it ends with the dawn of the civil rights era, the series makes clear that the legacy of Jim Crow is hardly gone.

''The fight has just begun,'' Hamilton said after one of his legal victories. ''Shout if you want, but don't shout too soon.''

''The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow'' does not shout, nor does it exult. It pays homage to sacrifice and achievement, and it leaves the door open to hope. Now run and tell that.

THE RISE AND FALL OF JIM CROW

On most PBS stations tonight (check local listings)

William R. Grant and Bill Jersey, executive producers; Richard Wormser, series producer; Sam Pollard, Mr. Jersey and Mr. Wormser, episode producers; Mr. Jersey and Mr. Wormser, episode directors and writers; Quest Productions, Videoline and WNET, New York, co-producers. Richard Roundtree, narrator

Published: 10 - 01 - 2002 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 1 , Page 1