The term Jim Crow probably originated in 19th-century minstrelsy, and it had some pre-Civil War usage, not in the South but in the North, to describe separate facilities for blacks and whites, including steamboats, hotels and restaurants. In the late 19th century, however, the term Jim Crow took on a new meaning, symbolizing the southern, and eventually national, system of legal segregation. Jim Crowism was given the legal stamp of approval in the "separate-but-equal" principle in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case (1896), but in everyday ways of relating and with a growing number of state laws and political devices, segregation of the races had long since become a reality. The standard device for disenfranchisement came in 1890 when Mississippi pioneered in restricting black voting through literacy, poll taxes and property qualifications. In 1881 Tennessee amended an earlier statute preventing blacks from suing discriminatory railroads with a new law requiring railroad companies to furnish separate cars for "colored passengers," and by 1900 all southern states had segregated their transportation systems. Throughout much of the South, including Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, separate educational facilities were a reality soon after the Civil War. During the first half of the 20th century Jim Crow was physically embodied in separate water fountains, eating places, bathrooms, Bibles in courtrooms and pervasive signs stating "Colored" and "White." The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) Supreme Court decision integrating schools and the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott (1955) signaled the beginning of the end of the Jim Crow era.

“Between 1892 to 1895 blacks gained political prominence in several Southern states, but this was short-lived as in 1896 the land-rich whites became bent upon disenfranchising blacks completely. This began a 25-year-long denunciation of the black as an inferior creation, incapable of moral vitality or learning and the drafting of laws that would disenfranchise blacks and not contravene the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. This was the birth of the Southern Alliance, the coming together of conservative Bourbons, opportunistic politicians and poverty-stricken farmers in an atmosphere of panic for the express purpose of translating a psychological aberration into a social institution. “Taking the floor of the Virginia convention in 1906, Carter Glass said: ‘We are here to discriminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limitation of the Federal Constitution, with a view to the eliminating of every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.’ “The entire South followed the same pattern. The result was the maze of voting laws, literacy tests, poll taxes and other ballot box curios that linger until now. “The total humiliation of blacks was under way. Tennessee led by passing the first Jim Crow law. All over the South the ‘white’ and ‘colored’ signs went up. Trains, busses, barbershops, schools and all other public places were segregated by law. Then, in 1896, the United States Supreme Court rendered the now famous Plessy vs. Ferguson decision, which set forth the doctrine of ‘separate but equal.’ Segregation thus became an American institution, a way of life imbedded in the law of the land. But if ‘separate but equal’ was the law, ‘separate and unequal’ was the practice.”
— The Negro Revolt, Louis Lomax

“One of the morale-building devices used by slave owners was the granting of holidays, which invariably included July 4 and December 25. The latter was the favorite, often running on for a week, the highlight coming on Christmas morning. When the slaves came to the big house to be greeted by the master and the mistress and to receive sundry small gifts, plus a dram of liquor, they were sometimes permitted to have a dance; if no fiddler were available, they would ‘Pat Juba.’ To ‘dance Jim Crow’ was one of their favorites: Once upon the heel tap, And then upon the toe, An’ ev’ry time I turn around I jump Jim Crow.”
— The Negro in the Making of America, Benjamin Quarles

(“Pat Juba” was a tradition brought over from Africa and passed down. It involved dancing to their own beat, often a clapping or moving of feet.)