1. America's Song
Blackface Minstrelsy

2. While many Northern Whites were outspoken abolitionists and furious about the cruelties they’d heard were taking place in the South, what did Northern Whites really know about authentic Southern Black culture?
Whites in the north had very little, if any contact at all with Black people. In short, Northern Whites had no idea what authentic Black culture really was.
So, how did Northern Whites get their education on what authentic Black culture really was?
Minstrelsy gave many Northern Whites their first look into Southern Black culture.
The Abolitionists

3. What was blackface minstrelsy?
The blackface minstrelsy was an American entertainment form consisting of comic skits, dancing, and music, performed by White actors in blackface or, after the Civil War, Black actors in blackface.
Beginning in the 1830s, and into the 1840s and 1850s, minstrelsy swept through America much like rock and roll would do a little more than a hundred years later. The whole country embraced it.
As the issues regarding slavery and abolition pushed their way toward the center of American politics, minstrelsy took off. Slavery was the hot issue of the day and minstrelsy was the pop entertainment that focused on the issue and presented it on stage in a humorous variety show.
The minstrel show was America’s first pop entertainment, and it provided the first representation of African-Americans on the theatrical or musical stage.

4. The shows were even billed as authentic, Ethiopian Delineations, with real plantation songs and dances. One troupe even called themselves the “Real Nigs.”
The shows comically misrepresented African-American cultural solely for the entertainment of white audiences.

5. Minstrel shows presented Blacks as cowering, primitive, sniveling, tricky, devious, childlike laughable clowns, too obtuse understand their misery.
For White people seeing a representation of Black culture for the first time, minstrelsy was no longer just an entertaining show, but rather what they believed was an “authentic” look into what African American people were really like.

6. Thomas “D. Daddy” Rice as “Jim Crow” Jump Jim Crow
Minstrelsy, which gave America its first pop music, gained enormous popularity around 1830 when Thomas D. “Daddy” Rice, a minor character actor out of New York City stole the song, dance and persona of a slave he saw singing and dancing on the streets while on a visit down South.
Daddy Rice named his song and dance routine after the man he saw performing it; a slave named Jim Crow.
Thomas “D. Daddy” Rice
as “Jim Crow”
Jump Jim Crow
Come listen all you gals and boys, I’m jis from Tuckyhoe
I’m going to sing a little song, my name is Jim Crow.
Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb’ry time weel about I jump Jim Crow.

7. Video clip
Al Jolson
Singing “Mammy”

8. Daddy Rice is considered one of America’s first pop icons.
The minstrel shows of the mid 1800’s were wildly popular, and the White actors in blackface made huge sums of money piquing the public’s curiosity about Black culture.
Daddy Rice is considered one of America’s first pop icons.
Though the shows were blatantly racist in nature, no one thought much of it at the time.

9. Black men were often represented as “Uncle Toms”
However, blackface minstrelsy played a vital role in creating and popularizing many of the stereotypes pertaining to Blacks.
Black men were often represented as “Uncle Toms”
Black women were always represented by “The Mammy”

10. Oh, white folks, we’ll have you to know
The sophistry of minstrel shows convoluted the perception of slavery by making slaves appear to be happy to be slaves; just happy Uncle Toms and Mammies who loved their masters like parents.
Happy Uncle Tom
Oh, white folks, we’ll have you to know
Dis am not de version of Mrs. Stowe;
Wid her de Darkies am all unlucky
But we am de boys from Old Kentucky.
Den hand de banjo down to play
We’ll make it ring both night and day
And we care not what de white folks say
Dey can’t get us to run away.
Christy Minstrels (1853)

11. Soon, minstrel shows began to satisfy White people’s fascination, imagination, and curiosity concerning Blacks.
Blackface minstrelsy became the dominant form of American pop music and entertainment for virtually all of the 19th century, and in various other forms, for much of the 20th century.
Blackface minstrelsy was instrumental in constructing racism in the United States.

12. Who was most responsible for writing the minstrel songs?
Ring, Ring De Banjo
Once I was so lucky, My massa set me free, I went to old Kentucky To see what I could see: I could not go no farder, I turn to massa's door, I lub him all de harder, I'll go away no more.
Stephen Foster (1851)
Early in his career as a song writer, Stephen Foster grossly misrepresented Black people and plantation life was highly romanticized.
Yet, these images have greatly impacted American society, American values, and American politics.
Many of the songs in the minstrel shows, like the two here, were used to push a political agenda; for example, the message here is that slaves are happy in the South, and have no desire to run away to the North.

13. America’s first great pop music composer
Referred to as plantation melodies, or Ethiopian melodies, the music of minstrel shows was presented to the public as authentic Black music.
But, was the music actually written by Black people?
No. Minstrelsy not only gave America its first pop music, it also gave America its first great pop music composer, Stephen Foster; a White northerner writing songs about plantation life in the Deep South.
The songs were so popular that they even became international hits. This Swanee River in German.
Stephen Foster
America’s first great pop music composer

14. Foster was from the polite society of Northern middle class White folks, and both he and his family felt more than a tinge of shame about his compositions of plantation songs for blackface minstrel shows.
Nelly Was a Lady
Nelly was a Lady Last night she died, Toll de bell for lubly Nell My dark Virginny bride. Nelly was a Lady Last night she died, Toll de bell for lubly Nell My dark Virginny bride.
- Stephen Foster (1849)
Over time, Foster began to change his lyrics. He refrained from using the racially offensive lyrics that he had used in his earlier compositions and replaced them with words more appropriate for the pallor.
These changes didn’t go without notice. In his song, Nelly Was a Lady, a song about a Black boatman’s wife who passed away, Foster shockingly refers to the African-American slave woman as a “lady.”
This marked the first time in American history that an American songwriter referred to an African-American woman in such a dignified and respectful manner.

15. The 1852 release of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin made Stephen Foster feel embarrassed about the music he was writing.
By then end of the century, over a million copies of the novel had been sold. In the novel, Tom, a gentle old slave, is a relatively intelligent man, although not formally educated. He has upstanding Christian morals and is a very likeable character.
In the minstrel show called “Tom,” the anti-slavery message is completely obliterated by an endless wave of enduring racial slurs. Old Uncle Tom is reduced to a cowardly, whining, ignorant, comical Black man.
In the 1880’s alone, there were as many as 500 Tom minstrel shows crisscrossing the nation at the same time. No one in America could escape the negative imagery that minstrel shows presented; it permeated American society.

16. After the release of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stephen Foster spent the entire summer writing a single song, which he titled, “My Old Kentucky Home.” The song told the tragic and sentimental tale of a slave family being sold apart.
My Old Kentucky Home
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, ’Tis summer, the darkies are gay, The corn top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom While the birds make music all the day. The young folks roll on the little cabin floor, All merry, all happy, and bright: By’n by Hard Times comes a knocking at the door, Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!
Weep no more, my lady, Oh! weep no more today! We will sing one song For the old Kentucky Home, For the old Kentucky Home, far away.
Stephen Foster (1853)
The song was well received by both Blacks and Whites, and remains an American classic today. At the time of its release, it made people in both the North and South feel the sentiments of the African-American plight in a way that had never before been seen in American culture.

17. The head must bow and the back will have to bend, Wherever the darkey may go: A few more days, and the trouble all will end In the field where sugar-canes may grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load, No matter ’twill never be light, A few more days till we totter on the road, Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!
Chorus: Weep no more, my lady, Oh! weep no more today! We will sing one song For the old Kentucky Home, For the old Kentucky Home, far away.
- Stephen Foster (1853)
What is the mood that this song creates?
How does this song compare to other minstrel songs?

18. How did Foster’s song lyrics changed over his career?
What impact do you think this had on American society?
Ex-slave, turned abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, credited Foster’s songs with “awakening the sympathies for the slaves, in which antislavery principles take root and flourish.”
Foster’s songs began to chip away at the American psyche by addressing African-American themes with a sense of dignity.

19. Despite Harriet Beecher Stowe’s good intentions, minstrelsy took her beloved, good-hearted Uncle Tom and turned his name into one of the worse racial epithets in America.
Calling a Black person, man or woman, an Uncle Tom, was and still is an insult of the highest order.
How has minstrelsy dictated the American consciousness regarding Blacks?

20. Video – Minstrel Images
The American version of Blackface minstrelsy codified race relations in the United States; established racial stereotypes, and spread the seeds of bigotry across a fertile American soil.
In the United States, minstrelsy has defined for the nation what it means to be Black.
Video – Minstrel Images

21. The problem with minstrelsy was that for many Whites (especially in the South), the representation of Black people that the minstrels shows portrayed, became the expected standard of behavior for Blacks, on stage or not.
White people that came across Black people in the streets expected to see Uncle Tom, Mammy, Sambo, or a pickaninny. These were the images of Blacks that whites were comfortable with and theses images began to appear everywhere.

22. After the Civil War the Blacks that wanted to become actors on the stage had to act the way Whites felt comfortable seeing Blacks; this meant blacking up just like the White actors.
Quite ironically, the Black actors had to learn from White actors, how they had to act to be considered Black by White people.
Bert Williams
The most famous Negro minstrel – off stage (on the right) and on stage (below).
For Blacks to be on stage and making money in theater, they had to pretend to be Whites who were pretending to be Black.
As racial hostilities in America increased near the end of the 19th century, White audiences demanded that all minstrels, Black and White, perform in blackface. For the Black actors, non-conformity meant unemployment.
Video – blacking up

23. What was the real harm of minstrelsy?
The minstrel shows, with their exaggerated caricatures of Black people, intensified racist stereotypes and made it clear that African-Americans were a group to be hated.
“Whiteness” in America is a hierarchical structure that requires an inferior minority. Minstrelsy made it clear who that inferior group was supposed to be.
Minstrelsy helped build and perpetuate racism in America.

24. Minstrelsy has affected both the way mainstream society thinks of Black people, and how Black people think of themselves.
One of the worse minstrel Myths that stuck in the United States was the color gradient. The color gradient placed a person’s “value” on a continuum from light skinned to dark skinned.
This resulted in light skinned people and dark skinned people becoming racial adversaries.
As the saying went (goes), the lighter your skin, the more intelligent you are and the worth you have. In this light, it becomes easy to see why being called Black, was a serious insult.
Minstrelsy effectively taught Black people to hate themselves.

25. By the time of the early silent film era, Black actors were available for hire, yet White actors in blackface were still cast to portray lazy, shiftless Blacks.
The most common Black (or blackface) character of the silent film era was the “Uncle Tom.”
The effect minstrelsy had on the entertainment industry was unavoidable.
For years, Blacks would be expected to act as if they were performing in a 19th century minstrel show if they wanted to be entertainers.

26. America’s highest rated radio show in the first half of the 20th century was the Amos ‘n’ Andy Show, a comedy show of two uneducated southern Black men trying to get along in the city.
Although the characters were supposed to be Black, two White men, in the spirit of 19th century minstrelsy, played the leading roles.
In 1951 when the Amos ‘n’ Andy Show made the crossover to television, two Black actors took up the characters and the show continued with its crudely racist content and overwhelming popularity.

28. Soon after Daddy Rice’s smash theatrical hit “Jump Jim Crow,” the name Jim Crow became the racial epithet for all Blacks in America. Hip Whites of the era began referring to all African-Americans collectively as Jim Crow and it stuck.