<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States . Enacted by white Democratic - dominated state legislatures in the late 19th century after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued to be enforced until 1965 . They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1896 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans in railroad cars . Public education had essentially been segregated since its establishment in most of the South after the Civil War . This principle was extended to public facilities and transportation, including segregated cars on interstate trains and, later, buses . Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those which were then available to white Americans; sometimes they did not exist at all . This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages . Segregation by law existed mainly in the Southern states, while Northern segregation was generally a matter of fact--patterns of housing segregation enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices . "Jim Crow" was a pejorative expression referring to a minstrel song called "Jump Jim Crow" by a performer appearing in blackface . </P> <P> Jim Crow laws--sometimes, as in Florida, part of state constitutions--mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks . The U.S. military was already segregated . President Woodrow Wilson, a Southerner, initiated segregation of federal workplaces at the request of southern Cabinet members in 1913 . </P>

When did the jim crow law began and end