Editing Jump Jim Crow (section)

== Origins ==
The origin of the name "Jim Crow" is obscure but may have evolved from the use of the [[pejorative]] "crow" to refer to black people in the 1730s.<ref>I Hear America Talking by Stuart Berg Flexner, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976, page 39; possibly also Robert Hendrickson, The Dictionary of Eponyms: Names That Became Words (New York: Stein and Day, 1985), {{ISBN|0-8128-6238-4}}, possibly page 162 (see edit summary for explanation).</ref> Jim may be derived from "Jimmy", an old [[Cant (language)|cant]] term for a crow, which is based on a pun for the tool "crow" ([[crowbar]]). Before 1900, crowbars were called "crows" and a short crowbar was and still is called a "jimmy" ("jemmy" in [[British English]]), a typical burglar's tool.<ref>Lockwood's dictionary of terms used in the practice of mechanical engineering by Joseph Gregory Horner (1892).</ref><ref name=nys>For example, in the New York statutes on burglary it reads: "... having in his possession any pick-lock, key, crow, jack, bit, jimmy, nippers, pick, betty or other implement of burglary ..."</ref><ref>John Ruskin in Flors Clavigera writes: "... this poor thief, with his crow-bar and jimmy" (1871).</ref> The folk concept of a dancing crow predates the Jump Jim Crow minstrelsy and has its origins in the old farmer's practice of soaking corn in [[whisky|whiskey]] and leaving it out for the crows. The crows eat the corn and become so drunk that they cannot fly, but wheel and jump helplessly near the ground, where the farmer can kill them with a club.<ref>"Sometimes he made the crows drunk on corn soaked in whiskey, and as they reeled among the hillocks, knocked them on the head", [https://books.google.com/books?id=RWgEAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22A%20Legend%20of%20Crow%20Hill%22&pg=PA68 "A Legend of Crow Hill". The World at Home: A Miscellany of Entertaining Reading. Groombridge & Sons, London (1858)], page 68.</ref><ref>"Somebody baited a field-fall of crows, once, with beans soaked in brandy; whereby they got drunk.", [https://books.google.com/books?id=qTMTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1 "Talking of Birds". The Columbian Magazine, July 1844, p. 7] (p. 350 of PDF document).</ref><ref>"Soak a few quarts of dried corn in whiskey, and scatter it over the fields for the crows. After partaking one such meal and getting pretty thoroughly corned, they will never return to it again." The Old Farmers Almanac, 1864.</ref>