Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation. The term "Jim Crow" originally referred to a black character in 1800s minstrel shows in which white performers wore "Blackface" and pretended to be black. The laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America and in some others, beginning in the 1870s. Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896 in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court laid out its "separate but equal" legal doctrine concerning facilities for African Americans. In practice, however, public facilities for blacks were nearly always inferior to those for whites, when they existed at all. Jim Crow laws touched every aspect of everyday life, including social interactions between the races, and were undergirded by violence.
Some examples of Jim Crow laws include:
- Separate hospitals, prisons, public and private schools, churches, cemeteries, public restrooms, and public accommodations for black people and white people.
- Jim Crow signs placed above water fountains, door entrances and exits, and in front of public facilities.
- Literacy tests and poll taxes, administered with informal loopholes and trick questions, that barred nearly all blacks from voting.
- Laws that prohibited black and white people from boating together, playing checkers or dominoes together, and entering parks together.
In general, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overturned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
