What were Jim Crow laws?
Overview of the history of Jim Crow laws, which discriminated against African Americans and enforced racial segregation between whites and Blacks.
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Curtis Hampton: From Jim Crow to election night in Spokane
• Nov. 8, 2026, 3:00 AM ET (The Spokane Spokesman-Review)
Transcript
Did You Know? Jim Crow Law
The laws that enforced racial segregation in the southern United States are called Jim Crow laws.
Jim Crow lasted from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s.
The name came from a minstrel routine named Jump Jim Crow where white actors performed in blackface. The show was so popular that “Jim Crow” became a derogatory term for Black people—and came to describe segregated life.
Jim Crow laws included the separation of white and Black people in schools and on public transportation, as well as in movie theaters, parks, and restaurants, in an effort to prevent any contact between Blacks and whites as equals.
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education declared that segregation in public schools (and, by implication, other public facilities, like transit) was unconstitutional.
Jim Crow laws began to be struck down across the South.
Though the defeat of Jim Crow didn’t end racism in the United States, it was a crucial step toward correcting decades of institutionalized discrimination against African Americans.
The laws that enforced racial segregation in the southern United States are called Jim Crow laws.
Jim Crow lasted from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s.
The name came from a minstrel routine named Jump Jim Crow where white actors performed in blackface. The show was so popular that “Jim Crow” became a derogatory term for Black people—and came to describe segregated life.
Jim Crow laws included the separation of white and Black people in schools and on public transportation, as well as in movie theaters, parks, and restaurants, in an effort to prevent any contact between Blacks and whites as equals.
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education declared that segregation in public schools (and, by implication, other public facilities, like transit) was unconstitutional.
Jim Crow laws began to be struck down across the South.
Though the defeat of Jim Crow didn’t end racism in the United States, it was a crucial step toward correcting decades of institutionalized discrimination against African Americans.
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