How did jim crow laws get their name?

Answer 1

“Jump Jim Crow” was the name of a minstrel routine originated about 1830 by Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice. He portrayed the Jim Crow character principally as a dim-witted buffoon, building on and heightening contemporary negative stereotypes of African Americans. “Jim Crow” came to be a derogatory term for African Americans, and in the late 19th century it became the identifier for the laws that reinstated white supremacy in the American South after Reconstruction. The demeaning character symbolically rationalized segregation and the denial of equal opportunity.

Answer 2

Jim Crow was an antebellum minstrel show character created by Thomas Dartmouth Rice in the early 1830s. "Daddy Rice" was a white actor who blackened his face with burnt cork and performed a song-and-dance act said to have been inspired by an elderly black man from the South. Rice's tattered costume and exaggerated movements and voice were an insulting parody that brought him international acclaim. The identity of the original Jim Crow, if he did exist, is unknown. Some say he was a slave in Ohio or South Carolina; others believe he may have been a slave owner. One faction holds that the name was derived from the simile "black as a crow." Regardless of its origin, the name "Jim Crow" soon became interchangeable with the word "Negro."
Source: http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/collect/