when did jim crow laws take place

Jim Crow laws took place roughly from the late 1870s (after Reconstruction) through the 1950s and into the mid‑1960s, when landmark civil rights laws finally dismantled them.

Quick Scoop: Key Dates

• Late 1870s: Southern states begin passing Jim Crow laws after federal troops leave the South and Reconstruction ends in 1877.

• 1890s: Segregation hardens; by the 1890s, formal Jim Crow systems are in place across the South.

• 1896: In Plessy v. Ferguson , the Supreme Court upholds “separate but equal,” giving Jim Crow constitutional cover.

• 1954: Brown v. Board of Education begins the legal dismantling of Jim Crow in public schools.

• 1950s–1960s: The civil rights movement attacks Jim Crow across the South.

• 1964–1965: Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 effectively end the legal Jim Crow system, though its social legacy continues.

So, when someone asks “when did Jim Crow laws take place,” historians usually frame it as an era from about 1877 to the mid‑1960s, with the most intense legal segregation from the 1890s through the 1950s.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.