Jim Crow and Segregation
After the
American Civil War (1861 to 1865), most
southern states, and later border states,
passed laws that denied blacks basic
human rights. It is not clear how, but the
minstrel character's name "Jim Crow"
became a kind of shorthand for the laws,
customs, and etiquette that segregated and
demeaned African Americans primarily
from the 1870s to the 1960s.
