Sixth-grader Loren Nelson had heard about Jim Crow, but it wasn't until she interviewed her grandparents -- and heard stories of segregated bathrooms, "white" and "colored" water fountains and hotels that didn't allow blacks -- that she understood what it meant.

As part of an oral history project at Baltimore's Midtown Academy, the 11-year-old and 65 of her classmates have been learning firsthand about the institutionalized discrimination that other city pupils have only read about in books.

Armed with tape recorders, video cameras and a list of questions, fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders set out this spring to document what it was like to live in an era of segregation in Baltimore and elsewhere. The result: a collection of living-history tales told by parents, grandparents and other participants that are dubbed "Remembering Jim Crow."

"All of these pages, the film, all of the work that they did, this should actually be archived in the Smithsonian under 'Midtown Academy' because this is a document you can keep for the rest of your lives," SaSa Quammie, who was interviewed by her fifth-grade son, Ptah, told the crowd at a recent history program at the Bolton Hill school.

Seventh-grader William McMillan interviewed his grandparents Norwood and Lucy Gross. William's mother, Brenda McMillan, videotaped the session at the Grosses' Pikesville home.

The 13-year-old said that one of the most interesting things he learned was how his grandmother had to sit in the balcony when she went to the movies.

"I thought that that was really amazing how blacks couldn't sit in the regular seats," he said. William and his classmates had learned about segregation and discrimination in school -- they had read Black Boy by Richard Wright -- but he hadn't realized how Jim Crow laws had directly affected his family.

"I was thinking, 'Wow, this happened to my grandparents, too?' I didn't know my grandparents had to go through that."

William's grandmother held the crowd's attention during the school program last month with stories about growing up in North Carolina. She showed the cosmetology license she earned in 1949 that had the words "COLORED SHOPS ONLY" typed at the top.

She hopes that sharing her experiences with William will encourage him to work hard in school, appreciate the things he has and strive for more.

"He has an opportunity to excel to a higher height," she said. "He doesn't have to encounter the [obstacles] that we encountered."

Midtown language arts teacher Peter French got the idea for the project from a book published last fall, Remembering Jim Crow, a history collection documenting blacks' experiences with segregation based largely on material from Duke University's Jim Crow South Collection.

French checked the book out of the library and had pupils listen to the companion compact discs during class to get a sense of what they might hear during their own interviews. Even with that preparation, some of the stories they heard surprised them -- and affected them in ways they hadn't anticipated.

"It made me feel kind of sad," said Aaron Colbert, 12, who along with two seventh-grade classmates, interviewed his grandmother, Jean E. Colbert.

Though she told the boys how Druid Hill Park had separate swimming pools and tennis courts for blacks and whites, she said her mother had mostly "protected" her from Jim Crow laws when she was a girl.

Later, though, she experienced racism much more directly. She recounted a time when she was shopping for a hat at the old Brager-Gutman department store in downtown Baltimore and was told that she wasn't allowed to try them on.

"I was trying on a hat, and the sales lady said, 'We try them on for you.' And I said, 'What does that mean? You place it on my head?'" Colbert said, in a transcript of the interview. "She said, 'No, we try them on for you.' ... I said, 'I cannot tell how the hat will feel on me and how I will look in that hat.' ... I just took a hat and put it on my head, took another hat and put it on my head, took another. I was just defiant."

"I don't think I could have made it like that," Aaron said. "I think that I would have broken down."

Loren Nelson, who interviewed her grandparents Jesse and Delores Sample, said that the oral history project helped her learn much more about Jim Crow than she would have by reading a textbook.

"This expressed more by talking to my own relatives about how they felt and how they expressed it," she said. "It was very interesting for a lot of people ... because I know a lot of people can't talk to their relatives like that. So maybe this was a chance for them to get to know their relatives better."