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• 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.

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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

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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.

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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

Presidents from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson were forced to see that Jim Crow was not just a moral catastrophe but a geopolitical liability.

From Salon • May 5, 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

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

Enumerating these challenges to Jim Crow doesn’t prove that either Ann Atwater or Durham, North Carolina, was unique in this regard; they were not.

From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson