Jim Crow laws

The 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 origin of the term Jim Crow is obscure, but probably refers to a minstrel show song called "Jump Jim Crow". The last of the Jim Crow laws were generally overturned in 1965 by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Formal and informal racial segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures (Redeemers) to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-white movement.

In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the South, beginning in the 1870s. Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court laid out its "separate but equal" legal doctrine concerning facilities for African Americans. Public education had essentially been segregated since it began during the Reconstruction era after 1863. Companion laws excluded most African Americans from the vote in the South.