The Jim Crow Laws were a series of local laws and regulations established in the southern states of the United States after the end of Reconstruction, with the objective of reinstating racial segregation against the black population, establishing certain requirements for the exercise of rights civilians and politicians who had been recognized for these in the Constitution after the end of the Civil War.
Thus, these laws established a sort of hierarchy between the different citizens of the southern states, where, ultimately, white men with high purchasing power were those who had the greatest prerogatives. Thus, an artificial hierarchy was generated that violated the right to equality of people, and affected all those people who did not meet the requirements that the laws established to exercise political rights (especially black and lower-class people).
To use your example, cede does mean to go. However, "recede" means to draw back or go back. Think of an ocean. What does the tide do at certain times? It recedes!
