The New Orleans mayor who removed Confederate statues from the city confronts the racism that shapes many Americans and argues for white America to reckon with its past.

"A history of the first civil rights movement and the origins of black and white in America. When we hear "civil rights," we tend to think of the 1950s and 1960s activism that put an end to Jim Crow segregation laws. In The Accident of Color, Daniel Brook takes us to New Orleans and Charleston, where before the Civil War, free, biracial people-- sometimes referred to as "browns"-- exercised many rights of citizenship. During Reconstruction, as a black-...