Jump To:

• Jim Crow
  Jim Crow

  noun

  a practice or policy of segregating or discriminating against Black people, as in public places, public vehicles, or employment.
• jim crow
  jim crow

  noun

Jim Crow

American  

Or jim crow

noun

1. a practice or policy of segregating or discriminating against Black people, as in public places, public vehicles, or employment.

2. Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a Black person.

---

adjective

1. favoring or supporting a segregationist or discriminatory policy of Jim Crow.

2. for Black people only.

   a Jim Crow school.

jim crow British  

/ ˈdʒɪm ˈkrəʊ /

noun

1. 1. the policy or practice of segregating Black people

   2. ( as modifier )

      jim-crow laws

2. 1. a derogatory term for a Black person

   2. ( as modifier )

      a jim-crow saloon

3. an implement for bending iron bars or rails

4. a crowbar fitted with a claw

---

Jim Crow Cultural  

1. A descriptive term for the segregation of institutions, businesses, hotels, restaurants, and the like. It also refers to the laws that required racial segregation.

---

Other Word Forms

• jim-crowism
  noun

Etymology

Origin of Jim Crow

An Americanism dating back to 1830–40; so called from the name of a song sung by Thomas Rice (1808–60) in a minstrel show

Example Sentences

But that is not, in fact, how Harlan meant it: In context, his broader argument was that permitting Jim Crow segregation would authorize a racial “caste” forbidden by the 14th Amendment.

From Slate • Jun. 22, 2026

Moy was born in 1938, the second of nine children raised by a “gospel-loving mom” and “jazz-loving dad” who had fled Jim Crow Louisiana for a relatively comfortable middle-class life in Detroit.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 19, 2026

You can hear the differences in lives and backgrounds and upbringing, of men and women in the ’60s, of class and Jim Crow, it’s all in there.

From Salon • Feb. 24, 2026

The Cold War simmered, Emmett Till had been murdered less than a year earlier and in Montgomery, Ala., a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. was challenging Jim Crow.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 31, 2026

Imagine if civil rights organizations and African American leaders in the 1940s had not placed Jim Crow segregation at the forefront of their racial justice agenda.

From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander