Also worth pointing out that 'Jim Crow'-type laws were first implemented in the Northern states. In the Antebellum South, economics and social relations dictated face to face interaction between blacks and whites, while whites in free states and in the West did not want to face competition from free black labor. The Jim Crow regime didn't really get entrenched until around the turn of the century, and it lasted perhaps half a century. It was actually an abberation in Southern civilation (see Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward). Southern culture - whether you're looking at music, vernacular literature, cuisine, etc. - has for centuries developed through processes of hybridization (or 'creolization') between whites, blacks and (perhaps to a lesser degree but still significant) Native Americans.