How did the Jim crow laws get this name?

Answer 1

Jim Crow was an antebellum minstrel show character created by Thomas Dartmouth Rice in the early 1830s. "Daddy Rice" was a white actor who blackened his face with burnt cork and performed a song-and-dance act said to have been inspired by an elderly black man from the South. Rice's tattered costume and exaggerated movements and voice were an insulting parody that brought him international acclaim. The identity of the original Jim Crow, if he did exist, is unknown. Some say he was a slave in Ohio or South Carolina; others believe he may have been a slave owner. One faction holds that the name was derived from the simile "black as a crow." Regardless of its origin, the name "Jim Crow" soon became interchangeable with the word "Negro."
Source: http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/collect/

Answer 2

The term Jim Crow was widely used as a euphemism for black persons, from the color of the bird. The 1832 faux-minstrel song "Jump Jim Crow" (a white portrayal of a slave stereotype) was used to attack Andrew Jackson's populist policies.

So the laws that were enacted following the easing of Reconstruction were called Jim Crow laws. While they could not openly prevent economic activity by African-Americans, they established a legal system of second-class citizenship by requiring blacks to use separate-but-equal facilities (whose blatant inequality was often overlooked). Notable were "back of the bus" public transportation rules, and refusal by white restauants to serve blacks (Negros, colored) at the same lunch counters as whites.

Another sub-genre of Jim Crow laws outlawed interracial marriages (miscegenation). These were widely enacted in the North and South.

It was not until the period after World War 2, when the armed forces were finally integrated, that the move for civil rights gained impetus, culminating in violent clashes in the South as voter drives and demonstrations became more of a threat to the white hierarchy. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the beginning of the end for racial discrimination disguised as a legal public policy.

Answer 3

There is a law called the Jim Crow law because of the African American Song Jump Down Jim Crow.

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Answer 4

It's not clear how Jim Crow, the character that popularized blackface minstrelsy in the 19th century, became associated with these laws, but the of use of this symbol says everything about the nature and intention of the laws. By the late 1830s “Jim Crow” had become a pejorative epithet for African Americans, though arguably it was neither as pervasive nor as hostilely derisive as some other terms

From the late 1870s until the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and ’60s, regimented racial segregation blighted America’s water fountains, restrooms, restaurants, lodging, and transportation, along with “separate but equal” schools. All of these were legally sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896) and codified by so-called Jim Crow laws.

Jim Crow is thought to have been first presented about 1830 by Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice, an itinerant white actor. Rice was not the first performer to don rags and use burnt cork to blacken his face to present a mocking exaggerated imitation of an African American, but he was the MOST FAMOUS, and his success helped establish minstrelsy as a popular theatrical form that thrived from about 1850 to 1870.

Rice first introduced the character who would become known as Jim Crow between acts of a play called 'The Kentucky Rifle', in which he performed a ludicrous off-balance dance while singing “Jump Jim Crow,” which described his actions (“Weel about and turn about and do jis so/Eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow”). He portrayed the character principally as a dim-witted buffoon; in the process, Rice not only created the template for other staple minstrel show characters, but he also fed on, heightened, and popularized pernicious stereotypes of African Americans even as his presentation reflected white fascination with Black culture.

Answer 5

It was named from a character in a play written by Thomas Dartmouth Rice in the early 1830s.