Jim Crow (character)

The Jim Crow persona is a theater character developed by entertainer Thomas D. Rice (1808–1860) and popularized through his minstrel shows.

Rice based the character on a folk trickster named Jim Crow that had long been popular among enslaved black people.

Rice applied blackface makeup made of burnt cork to his face and hands[3] and impersonated a very nimble and irreverently witty African-American field-hand who sang, "Come listen all you galls and boys, I'm going to sing a little song, my name is Jim Crow, weel about and turn about and do jis so, eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.

"[6] Rice's famous stage persona eventually lent its name to a generalized negative and stereotypical view of black people.

The Jim Crow period was later revived by President Woodrow Wilson: after a showing (the first movie viewing in the White House) of the motion picture The Birth of a Nation (1915), which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed black people as bestial rapists, he signed segregation laws and targeted black people in government.

[8] The "Jim Crow" character as portrayed by Rice popularized the perception of African-Americans as lazy, untrustworthy, unintelligent, and unworthy of social participation.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851), a young schoolboy buys gingerbread "Jim Crow" cookies for a penny each.