Jim Crow Laws

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century that enforced racial segregation. The origin of the term Jim Crow is obscure but probably refers to a minstrel show song called Jump Jim Crow; formal and informal segregation policies were also present elsewhere in the United States, even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting, and the Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove the political and economic gains African Americans had made during the Reconstruction era.