WHO WAS JIM CROW? Between the 1830s and the 1950s, minstrel shows starred white performers who smeared burnt cork on their faces and ridiculed African-American life. Thomas “Daddy” Rice is credited with popularizing minstrel shows with the song “Jump Jim Crow,” which, he said, he’d heard from a black singer. After the sheet music sold widely, Jim Crow became a standard character in minstrel shows and then evolved into a term to represent the whole system of laws and customs that segregated black and white Americans.
