Before Jim Crow Was Law, It Was Entertainment That Made White America Laugh Most people know about Jim Crow laws, but almost nobody knows where the term actually came from. In 1828, a white performer named Thomas Dartmouth Rice created a blackface character that became one of the most popular acts in American history—so popular that by 1838, the Boston Post declared him as famous as Queen Victoria. Rice's "Jump Jim Crow" character mocked an elderly disabled Black man, portraying Black people as