Jim Crow
/dʒɪmˈkrəʊ
/noun US
1 [mass noun] The former practice of segregating black people in the US: eventually Jim Crow was abolished on interstate carriers [as modifier]: Jim Crow laws...
- They are the type of laws that supported slavery, bringing about the creation of an Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the type of laws that sustained a Jim Crow era of segregation.
- By 1913, just as there was for schools, housing, public transportation, there was a Jim Crow section for black Civil War memory.
- What Jackson did was an act of protest, not unlike what Rosa Parks committed when she refused to give in to a Jim Crow law.
1.1 [count noun] offensive A black person.
2An implement for straightening iron bars or bending rails by screw pressure.
Derivatives
Jim Crowism
- Firmly locked in place throughout the South by 1915, Jim Crowism had two cardinal features.
- We are tired of this city using development as a new wave of Jim Crowism.
Origin
Mid 19th century: the name of a black character in a 19th-century plantation song.