Welcome
This website serves as an archive of black culture in early theatre before 1900. Scroll to start your journey.
Origins
African American culture—most commonly referred to as Black culture or Black American culture—derived from deep African roots during the enslavement period and beyond which resulted in it having a massive impact on modern day culture. Imbued with strength, art, beauty, and courage, African American culture differs heavily from European American culture despite colonizers many attempts at culture erasure. Even more notably, the culture has been surviving systemic racism built on rampant violence, exclusion, and continued repression.
Additionally, African Americans created unique customs and breathtaking creations in many fields such as art, music, literature, religion, education, cuisine, and much more! Not only did these contributions define black identities, but they also shaped American culture.
Furthermore, African American culture bears an impact much greater than the borders of the United States, they shaped global trends and movements in different areas. From jazz and hip-hop to the power of literacy coined in the Harlem Renaissance, the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic legacy of black people continues to impact the world.
Major Setbacks
A short history of the origin of blackface and how it affected African Americans' progress.
Apparently, the point of blackface was to be a creative outlet for poor and working-class whites who felt "squeezed politically, economically, and socially from the top, but also from the bottom," which is fairly ironic as the point of minstrel acts was to "kick the dog while its already down." Simply put, it was for white people who felt like the minority of the majority.
To perform blackface, minstrels would smear burnt cork and greasepaint/shoe polish to blacken their skin and would paste on red or white makeup to bolden their lips. Woolly wigs and raggamuffin clothes were also worn to basically demean black people on cleanliness and etiquette. Paradoxically, by the 1840s, some black performers took to minstrel work to perform similar acts.
Billy Van, the monologue comedian, 1900.
Here we see how commonplace blackface was and how highly regarded it was as "comedy."
Cover of early edition of "Jump Jim Crow" sheet music.
Here we see a Jim Crow performer, real name Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice, in his usual minstrel role at the American Theatre (also called the Bowery Theatre). "Jump Jim Crow" was a popular song to be performed during minstrel shows starting from 1828.
Where does Jim Crow come in?
During the 1830s and '40s, Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice (1808-1860) was a white minstrel who popularized a variant of blackface, one specifically modeled after an enslaved man. He called the character Jim Crow, a character where he acted as a grotesque caricature of an African American. This persona was often paired with his "Negro ditties" like "Jump Jim Crow." Unfortunately, Rice was neither the first nor the last to perform in blackface, he merely made "Jim Crow" a household name and a class act for other minstrels.
His nickname "Daddy" came from people calling him the father of minstrelsy. From the 1830s to early 1900, audiences erupted with laughter at the minstrels' unnaturally blackened faces and acting as silly, lazy, giddy, black people.
Thankfully, the popularity of blackface started to dwindle with the rapid growth of radio and motion picture development in the 1920s, limiting it to amateur minstrel shows in local churches, high schools, community centers, and theaters until the late 1960s.
However, the name Jim Crow stuck around as it served as nickname for segregation laws and practices that put in place the racial hierarchy that defined American society; mostly, but absolutely not limited to, southern/border states from 1877 through the mid-1960s. This system of keeping black people at the bottom ranks was kept in place by quotidian objects and images, such as unfairly tedious literacy test.
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