Talking to her, it was easy to imagine that the place would not have looked so different when it was one of the few inns open to blues musicians (or anybody else who was black) during the Jim Crow era.

ECONOMIST: The music of poor blacks enriches America��s deep south

But the rise of Jim Crow laws in the late 1880s -- segregating blacks and whites -- spelled an end to the golden era of jockeys like Winkfield.

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