What does the term “Jim Crow” mean?
The term “Jim Crow” came from a song in a minstrel show in the 1830s. Blackening his face in order to resemble an African American, a performer sang and danced a routine making fun of a silly black person, called “Jim Crow.” Gradually this character’s name came to stand for segregation and discrimination against African Americans in the late nineteenth century. The “Jim Crow” laws deprived African Americans of their civil rights and defined blacks as inferior.
