Meaning of Jim Crow | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A Black man.
   derogatory, ethnic, obsolete, offensive, slur
2. A World War II code name for patrols along the British coastline to intercept enemy aircraft, originally intended to warn of invasion in 1940.
   historical
3. The collective policies and customs of an era of racial oppression in the U.S., especially legalized racial persecution and segregationist practices, prevalent from the late 1800s through the 1960s until challenged by the U.S. civil rights movement.
   historical
4. A double-action planing tool invented by Joseph Whitworth, in which the blade ‘jumps’ to face the other way on the back-stroke.
5. A fictional character from various minstrel show performances who is stereotypically depicted as an unintelligent, violent, and promiscuous Black man.
6. A tool for bending railway rails, by holding the rail with two arms and pushing a screw into the other side.

Examples

“Texas stands for segregation—for Jim Crow cars, for eating in separate restaurants, for sitting in separate rail coaches, for doing all the things which make white and black people in the United States realise how different they are.”

“Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?”

“… flying cannon equipped Spitfires V’s mainly on ‘Jim Crow’ operations (operational Patrols along the home coastline intercepting any hostile aircraft and looking out for any invasion forces).”

“Two other machines exhibited by Whitworth… One was furnished with a reversing tool to plane both ways, and called, from its peculiar motion, a Jim Crow machine.”

“He has considerably improved upon the planing machine, in his “Jim Crow” machine, so called because the cutter reverses itself and works both ways, and in fact adapts itself to any position to do its work.”

“The “Jim Crow” machine, which is Whitworth's patent, was new to some of the visitors. … But with a “Jim Crow” a cut is obtained both ways.”

“When rails have to be bent with a Jim Crow, as in setting stock or check-rails, or straightening a bent rail, they should always be heated first, or they are liable to crack, especially steel rails.”

“It is placed on the rail pretty much as a jim-crow is set, and as the middle roll is turned it travels along on the rail, curving the rail as it moves.”

“Quelling his nerves, Moist grabbed a jim crow and opened the trap door on to the roof of the guard's van, to the initial amazement of the grag who had been trying to force his way in.”

CEFR level