Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a derog. adj. describing a black person or defining something as pertaining to a black stereotype.

1847		Bell’s Life in Sydney 20 Nov. 2/2: Capping the joke by placing on poll of the [clothes] prop a Jim Crow tile.
1852		H.B. Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1981) 275: I thought she was rather a funny specimen in the Jim Crow line .
1889		News-Courant (Cottonwood Falls, KS) 12 Sept. 2/2: ‘When Jack ’n’ the jim-crow marshal got thar, they jes’ run him in’.
1891		D.U. Sloan Fogy Days, and Now 126: I pigeon-winged and she wire-toed, [...] I gave a jim crow lick and she kill-trankled.
1899		London Standard 12 Apr. 8/2: He waas clad in [...] brown canvas trousers and a Jim Crow hat.
1902		J.H.M. Abbott Tommy Cornstalk 96: [H]e wanted to give one of our hosses to his darned Jim Crow coon! We couldn’t ’low that, so we hunted him an’ his darned son of a sweep away.

2. small-time, incompetent, fraudulent.

1838		N.Y. Advertiser and Express 18 Apr. 2/1: Gov. Marcy’s message, Mr. Secretary Woodbury’s Letter [etc] [...] are Jim Crow performances [DA].
1851		Bell’s Life in Sydney 29 Mar. 2/7: His learned opponent objected to questions [...] with a Jim-Crow rapidity irresistably ludicrous.
1881		‘Bill Nye’ Bill Nye and Boomerang 196: I will [...] not call to my aid a cheap Jim Crow, hand-me-down-liar.
1897		A.H. Lewis Wolfville 193: He hangs about Wolfville an’ Red Dog alternate turnin’ little jim-crow tricks for the express company.
1900		El Paso Dly Herald (TX) 15 Feb. n.p.: ‘Jim Crow’ Miners Doing Too Much ‘Wind-Jamming’.
1903		A. Adams Log Of A Cowboy 203: They wanted to come back on me to make them good, but, shucks! I wasn’t responsible if their Jim Crow outfit lost the cattle.
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 19: Leonidas gave us a bird’s-eye view of the kind of Jim Crow settlement we were heading for.

3. (US, also jimcro, jim-crowed) of or for use by blacks only, segregated, e.g. Jim Crow car.

1840		Mass. Anti-Slavery Soc. Report 8 77: If they had explicitly averred that all colored passengers are required to take scats in the Jim Crow car, it would have saved them from the merited charge of hypocrisy.
1856		J. Brown Biography of an American Bondman 57: As there was no Jim Crow car on that road, blacks were generally made to ride in the baggage-ca.
1885		Sacramento Daily Record-Union 12 Dec. 4/4: The Jim Crow car is [...] a chief agency or trouble - for it is representative of the spirit of the South and the condition of the negro in the South.
1887		Appeal (S. Paul, Minn) 19 Sept. 6/6: Petitioner claims that he was not permitted to ride in the first-class coach [...] but was compelled to ride in what is known on the said Georgia railroad as the ‘Jim Crow car’.
1898		J.A. Jones ‘Negro Soldiers South’ Indianapolis Freeman 24 Dec. 2: They were herded into Jim Crow cars and made to ride as cattle.
1903		Colored American (DC) 3 Oct. 2/1-2: The Colored People Thrifty and Thriving, though Opposed by Jim Crow Legislation.
1905		C. Chesnutt Colonel’s Dream 226: They had been brought down in the regular ‘Jim Crow’ car, for the colonel saw coloured women and children come out ahead of them.
1910		Broad Ax (Salt Lake City, UT) 31 Dec. 1/6: All these things have a tendency to cause the whites to resort to jim crow tactics.
1912		J.W. Johnson Autobiog. of an Ex-Coloured Man (1927) 81: The effort is sometimes made to convey the impression that the better class of coloured people fight against riding in ‘Jim Crow’ cars because they want to ride with white people.
1920		Appeal (St Paul, Minn.) 3 July 2/1: if a Jim Crow Y.M.C.A. is right, then lynching disenfranchisement, Jim-crow cars and all the abomintions of the South are right.
1921		Sthn Indicator (Columbia, SC) 19 Feb. 4/2: We now have jim crow public carriers, jim crow churches, jim crow stores, jim cro waiting rooms, jim crow clerks, etc.
1928		N.I. White Amer. Negro Folk-Songs 319: [reported from Cambridge, Mass., 1917–1918] De white gal rides in the Pullman car, / Yaller gal try to do de same, / De po’ black girl rides in the old Jim Crow car, / But she get dere just de same.
1934		J. Peterkin Roll, Jordan, Roll 125: The train arrives and halts long enough for those aboard the Jim Crow car to lean out of windows and exchange boisterous greetings.
1942		People’s Voice (NY) 25 Apr. 1/2: Three Negro soldiers [...] rebelled against the jimcro seating [...] in a bus.
1947		S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal (2001) 66: He belonged with the other lepers in a day-coach – in a Southern jimcrow day-coach. [Ibid.] 121: There is no reason under heaven why American citizens should be compelled to travel in jimcrow cars.
1952		L. Hughes Laughing to Keep from Crying 177: He thought about their forthcoming appearance in a Washington theater that wasn’t even Jim Crow – but barred Negroes altogether.
1969		C. Himes Blind Man with a Pistol (1971) 29: He had lived all his life in a black slum, had attended jim-crowed schools, and [...] had got the customary jim-crow job in a factory.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 17: I been light enough to sit in the front of a Jim Crow bus.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 104: Jim Crow stood for segregation, as in the Jim Crow car (for blacks only) on a train.
1992		D. Pinckney High Cotton (1993) 29: Even if there had been a law against Jim Crow trains, blacks were so scared we would have sat in the colored car.
2000		F.X. Toole Rope Burns 173: The South was still de facto Jim Crow territory in the late sixties.

4. (US) describing legislation that is racially prejudiced against blacks; thus racist in general.

1904		Nation 17 Mar. 202: Writing of the ‘Jim Crow’ bills now before the Maryland Legislature, the Cardinal expressed his strong opposition [DA].
1908		Ocala Eve. Star (FL) 27 Feb. 2/2: W.H. Hart, a negro attorney [...] arived here yesterday [...] to enjoin the Oklahoma railroads from enforcing the ‘Jim Crow’ law.
1913		H.A. Franck Zone Policeman 88 11: For though Uncle Sam may permit individual states to do so, he may not himself openly abjure before the world his assertion as to the equality of all men by enacting ‘Jim Crow’ laws.
1926		Van Vechten Nigger Heaven 235: You see, most Negroes are so touchy and nervous that they obey the unwritten Jim Crow laws.
1941		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 7 June 7/2: Powers gave the impression that Joe [Louis] had some nerve hitting a white man after the bell in a jim crow town.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 58: Informal but inflexible Negro sections were established, Jim Crow habits were imposed.
1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 123: ‘I ain’t no damn Negro and I ain’t no paddy. I’m Puerto Rican.’ ‘You think that means anything to them James Crow paddies?’.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 105: The white man would be forced [...] to put black Edward Cato’s name in his Jim Crow history books.
1976		N. Thornburg Cutter and Bone (2001) 156: The good old Jim Crow days when white boys only had to run against other white boys.
1999		‘Master Pimp’ Pimp’s Rap n.p.: African Americans suffered under the severe segregation enforced by Jim Crow laws.
2000		W. Shaw Westsiders 138: ‘Jim Crow’ legislation — named after a grotesque, bumbling black stage character played by white actors in the nineteenth century — had proved remarkably effective.