Jim Crow laws were laws created by white southerners to enforce racial segregation across the South from the 1870s through the 1960s.
Under the Jim Crow system, “whites only” and “colored” signs proliferated across the South at water fountains, restrooms, bus waiting areas, movie theaters, swimming pools, and public schools. African Americans who dared to challenge segregation faced arrest or violent reprisal.
In 1896, the Supreme Court declared Jim Crow segregation legal in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. The Court ruled that “separate but equal” accommodations African Americans were permitted under the Constitution.
Jim Crow: a symbol for racial segregation
Jim Crow segregation was a way of life that combined a system of anti-black laws and race-prejudiced cultural practices. The term "Jim Crow" is often used as a synonym for racial segregation, particularly in the American South. The Jim Crow South was the era during which local and state laws enforced the legal segregation of white and black citizens from the 1870s into the 1960s. In the Jim Crow South, it was illegal for black Americans to ride in the front of public buses, eat at a “whites only” restaurant, or attend a “white” public school.^1
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There was also a subtler, social dimension to Jim Crow, which required that African Americans demonstrate subservience and inferiority to whites at all times. A black man who succeeded in business might find his shop burned to the ground by jealous whites. A black woman who failed to step off of the sidewalk to make way for a white man might be fired by her employer the following day. A black man who had a relationship with a white woman might be hanged in the middle of town. Most Southern whites interpreted any claim to pride or equality by African Americans as an affront.
The term Jim Crow originated from the name of a black character from early- and mid- nineteenth century American theater. Crows are black birds, and Crow was the last name of a stock fictional black character, who was almost always played onstage by a white man in wearing blackface makeup. Due to the prevalence of this character, "Jim Crow" became a derogatory term for people of African descent.^2
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