According to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Michigan’s Ferris State University, a white minstrel show actor named Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice (1808-1860) performed solo skits based on a stereotypical black character named Jim Crow. Rice’s highly exaggerated performance manner was, mostly, based on showing blacks as lazy “darkies” and as natural-born musical talents whose behavior was nonetheless childlike and buffoonish. The name Jim Crow.
