Fun Fact Friday: Jim Crow

Continuing on last week's theme of person as thing, here's your weekly random reference question:

The question:
Do you have book of Jim Crow?

The follow-up question:
Are you looking for information about the Jim Crow segregation laws?

The follow-up answer:
I don't know what it means ... here is assignment ...

Please permit me a diversionary tirade here: this was the second time that day that an ESL (English as a Second Language) student was sent to the library to research a topic that s/he didn't understand. I'm guessing it's the same assignment since the other student was told to write about the Freedom Riders bus boycotts.

I certainly support ESL instructors choosing to teach English by having students actually learn something along the way. But these students (who, here, are mostly former-USSR immigrants) aren't being given enough information before they're sent off to do their assignments, so they just end up being frustrated, thinking they're not only "bad at English" but also too "stupid" to write college-level papers.

Neither of the students I worked with had any idea that their paper topic dealt with segegration of whites & blacks in the American south (and before you get all sputtery at their "ignorance," if you were a Ukranian 19-year old, how much would you know or care about US history?) The student with the Jim Crow question came in thinking she was after a biography of a guy named Jim Crow, and the other student had spent an hour Googling "Freedom Riders" and kept coming up with stuff about horses and motorcycle gangs.

But of course I kept this tirade quietly to myself (until now) and instead picked up the pieces of their and my exploded brains and tried my best to teach civil rights history 101 in a nutshell ... which is harder than it sounds. But it's probably easy if you're a history teacher. And that's my whole point.

Anyway. Moving on. I know you're really reading for your Friday fact, so here it is:

"Jim Crow," before it meant a set of codes regulating the segregation of whites from non-whites, actually did refer to a person, or, more accurately, to a character.

The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State U has a very good article about the origins of the name "Jim Crow". I spent a good bit of time at this site today, and it's a fascinating project worth exploring, if you're interested.

PBS also hosts a companion website to its documentary The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, where you can see maps of where and when the Jim Crow laws were in effect, and watch /listen to/ read Jim Crow-era stories.