Jim Crow was a black stage character invented by minstrel star Thomas Rice in the decades before the Civil War.
The name came to be applied to the segregationist laws that kept blacks separate from whites beginning in the 1870s.
The Supreme Court declared Jim Crow laws unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
The Union had a population of about 20,700,000 during the Civil War. The 11 states of the Confederacy had a population of 9,100,000 including nearly 4,000,000 slaves.
James K. Polk, who served as Speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839, was sworn in as president in 1845. Polk served one term, leaving office in 1849.
As of 1990, the magazine empire Time Warner was about twice as big, with $1.855 billion in magazine revenue to Hearst’s $993 million.
Dixville Notch, New Hampshire is the first election district to vote and report its returns in presidential elections.
In 1932, the Woolworth chain of “five & dime” stores began to offer 20-cent merchandise in addition to five- and ten-cent items.
The founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) Samuel Gompers was, like his father, a cigar maker. The English immigrant reshaped the Cigar Makers International Union before founding the AFL in 1886.