Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Jim Crow Laws

The Jim Crow Laws emerged in southern states after the U.S. CIVIL WAR. First enacted in the 1880s by lawmakers who were bitter about their loss to the North and the end of SLAVERY, the statutes separated the races in all walks of life. The resulting legislative barrier to equal rights created a system that favored whites and repressed blacks, an institutionalized form of inequality that grew in subsequent decades with help from the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the laws came under attack over the next half century, real progress against them did not begin until the Court began to dismantle SEGREGATION in the 1950s. The remnants of the Jim Crow system were finally abolished in the 1960s through the efforts of the