Question

explain what the word jim crow meant to many whites by the time of the civil war.

Answer 1

Jim Crow was a stock character from the minstrel shows. The minstrel shows were usually white performers in black face singing, dancing and making jokes that played down to racial stereotypes.

Jim Crow came into common use after the Civil War and the term was used to describe the post-reconstruction laws that instituted segregation and tried to re-enslave African-Americans.

Though slavery was dead by 1865, in the late 1800's any unemployed African-American in the Old South could be arrested for vagrancy and forced to work for the county; and the county could choose to "rent out" that prisoner's labor to a local business or landholder without paying the prisoner.

Many of the coal mines in Alabama ran on prisoner labor up until the 1930's

Answer 2

so can you shorten that please

Answer 3

Jim Crow was the Segregation laws