Tube Notes

By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service

Tonight's Must-See

"The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow," 10 p.m., PBS. In the aftershocks of the Civil War, former slaves saw new tragedies: Many Southerners had no intention of giving them real freedom and several presidents would do nothing to protect them. Soon, some were grabbing fresh solutions. Benjamin Singleton sparked a migration that created 20 black towns in Kansas. Booker T. Washington turned the Tuskegee Institute into a self-sustaining college, training school and farm. Others scrambled for pockets of freedom in the Mississippi Delta or the islands off Georgia and South Carolina. Some succeeded, some failed; all struggled heroically. Their stories are beautifully told in the start of a four-week documentary.

"The Tramp and the Dictator," 2 and 5:30 p.m., Turner Classic Movies. Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler were born four days apart in 1889. They were small men, capable of stirring the masses. Their lives are paralleled in this skillful documentary leading to Chaplin's 1940 "The Great Dictator," which mocked Hitler. That film is shown at 3 p.m.