The Strange Career of Jim Crow

C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow argues that legal segregation in the American South was not an age-old tradition but a relatively recent development. Woodward, a leading historian of the American South, showed that these segregationist laws were primarily enacted in the 1890s, following the defeat of the Populist movement. This challenged the common belief that racial separation was a long-standing custom.

Jim Crow laws mandated the separation of Black and white people in public facilities, including transportation and schools, and extended to various other public spaces. Despite constitutional prohibitions against racial discrimination, Southern states implemented measures like biased literacy tests, property qualifications, and poll taxes to disenfranchise African Americans. The term "Jim Crow" itself originated from a minstrel show character popularized in the 19th century, which became a pejorative term for African Americans and later symbolized these segregationist laws.123