Is the verb "jimmy" related to "Jim Crow"?
The suggestion made me laugh, so I had to check...and the answer is that I couldn't find any evidence that the verbal sense of 'jimmy', 'to use a crowbar', came from "Jumping Jim Crow" (or "Jump Jim Crow"), the title of the song that in part inspired a minstrel show that itself came to represent systemic discrimination.
The minstrel show was supposedly inspired by Thomas D. Rice's observation of
a black stableman named Jim Crow who was dressed in ragged clothes. The man had a crooked leg and deformed shoulder. While he worked, the man performed a song and dance called ‘Jumping Jim Crow’.... Rice bought Jim's clothes and learned his song and dance.
(From Blackface! Origins of Jump Jim Crow, retrieved 17 Sept 2015.)
The song perhaps did not originate with Rice or his sponsor, the unnamed "stableman"; rather it might have come from a slave folk song rooted in African
...folk tales of trickster animals, including birds, such as crows and buzzards who seem foolish, but who always manage to get what they want through cleverness and luck. In the Yoruba culture of West Africa, he is a crow named "Jim." The slave trade brought these folk tales to America and "Jim Crow" was a favorite.
(op. cit.)
After a somewhat cursory search, I was unable to find corroboration for the account at Blackface! other than an equally unsourced glancing mention:
Some time around 1830, Rice learned a popular African-American song-and-dance routine, based on the myth of the trickster figure, an escaped slave named Jim Crow.
(From "The Legacy of Blackface: Artists Take On Roots of Racist Performance Tradition", June 03, 2004, retrieved 17 Sept 2015.)
Particularly, I was unable to find corroboration of the supposed source in Yoruba folk tales about a trickster figure named "Jim Crow". The principal animal trickster figure in Yoruba folk tales is a tortoise. My inability to find verifiable corroboration with a cursory search, however, does not necessarily mean the account at Blackface! is untrue or inaccurate.
Instead of corroboration, I did turn up a more scholarly account casting rather thorough doubt upon the story about Rice's inspiration for the minstrelsy. "In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter", by Robert Christgau ("Dean of American Rock Critics"), published by The Believer in 2004, tellingly reviews several other investigations into the origins of the song.
Christgau, saliently, cites musicologist Charles Hamm's analysis of the song:
Hamm acknowledges that Rice "may have been telling the truth" before making what ought to be an obvious point: "It is equally likely that the story of the tune's origin was invented to give authenticity to a white man's portrayal of a black." Hamm believes Rice needed the help. He can discern no African elements in "Jim Crow," which suggested "both an Irish folk tune and an English stage song," ....
(Retrieved from "In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter" 17 Sept 2015.)
For jemmy, n., I find this:
- A crowbar used by burglars, generally made in sections screwing together.
1811 Lexicon Balatronicum Jemmy, a crow..much used by house~breakers. Sometimes called Jemmy Rock.
["jemmy, n.". OED Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/101038 (accessed September 17, 2015). Emphasis mine. Note that, as pointed out by Sven in the comments, the spelling "Rock" in "Jemmy Rock" is an editorial error in the OED: the text of the 1811 Lexicon Balatronicum shows "Rook", which is a type of Eurasian crow "with a bare face and a raucous voice".]
The noun and verb jimmy is from a dialectical and colloquial pronunciation of jemmy. The first textual evidence in the OED showing a verbal sense for 'jimmy' is 1893.
For Jim Crow..., n., this:
1.
a. The name of an early 19th-century plantation song of the American South; (also) a stage presentation of a song and dance first performed by Thomas D. Rice (1808–60) and subsequently by other actors dressed as blackface minstrels.
and also this:
- An implement for bending or straightening iron rails by the pressure of a screw.
1875 in E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech.
["Jim Crow | Jim-crow | jim crow, n.1". OED Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/101312?rskey=gckEq3&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed September 17, 2015).]
Plus this from Collins:
jim crow ... n (often capitals)
...
(Tools) an implement for bending iron bars or rails
(Tools) a crowbar fitted with a claw
[C19: from Jim Crow, name of song used as the basis of an act by Thomas Rice (1808-60), American entertainer]
[Crow, Jim. (n.d.) Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged. (1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003). Retrieved September 17 2015 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Crow%2c+Jim].
According to Etymonline Jimmy is an expression first used in 1848 to refer to a crow bar, that was before Jim Crow Laws (1875) were implemented. Its origin appears to be from a variant of the proper name "James".
Jimmy:
- "burglar's crowbar," 1848, variant of jemmy, name for a type of crowbar much used by burglars, special use of Jemmy, familiar form of proper name James.
As for the term Crow:
The use of the word 'crow' to describe an iron bar, usually with one end slightly bent and sharpened, is documented in English as far back as the year 1400. The device was so named because its splayed end resembled a crow's beak or foot; by the mid-18th century it was known as a 'crow bar,' and by the mid-19th century the two words had been joined to form 'crow-bar' and then finally 'crowbar.'
The use of the word 'crow' as a slang or pejorative reference to blacks didn't occur until three centuries later, however, and the term 'Jim Crow' not until another century after that. Blacks were first called 'crows' in the 1730s, and the popularization of that term was almost certainly the progenitor of the 'Jim Crow' character created a hundred years later:
The term likely originated with a song introduced by blackface minstrel Thomas D. Rice about 1828. "Jim Crow," sung and danced by Rice in the United States and England, has as its introduction:
- Come, listen all you gals and boys,
I'se just from Tucky hoe;
I'm goin' to sing a little song;
My name's Jim Crow.The chorus ran:
- Ebery time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.
Wheel about and turn about and do jis so,
And ebery time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.Rice is said to have patterned his song and dance on that of an old Kentucky field hand he had observed. His routine became so familiar that a few years later an antislavery book was titled The History of Jim Crow, and it is from such uses of Jim Crow to signify "Negro" that the discriminatory laws and practices take their name, though the first such laws were not enacted until 1875.
Although 'crowbar' and 'Jim Crow' share a common root, neither term was derived from or references the other. Crowbars are simply tools, not linguistic remnants of a racist heritage.
(www.snopes.com/language)
Note that proper names have often been used to refer to different contexts.
Jack for instance:
- late 14c., jakke "a mechanical device," from the masc. name Jack. The proper name was used in Middle English for "any common fellow" (mid-14c.), and thereafter extended to various appliances replacing servants.