Tennessee initiated the modern Jim Crow era by enacting a law mandating segregated railroad cars, becoming the first state to formalize such racial segregation after Reconstruction. This law marked the beginning of a wave of legalized segregation across the Southern United States. Following Tennessee’s lead, other states instituted similar laws: Florida (1887), Mississippi (1888), Texas (1889), Louisiana (1890), Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Georgia (1891), South Carolina (1898), North Carolina (1899), Virginia (1900), Maryland (1904), and Oklahoma (1907).

Note: These laws, collectively known as “Jim Crow laws,” laid the legal groundwork for decades of systemic racial discrimination and were not dismantled until the mid-20th century civil rights movement.