Blackface! - The History of Racist Blackface Stereotypes

  Blackface! Origins of Jump Jim Crow     Thomas Rice is credited with creating the Jim Crow character, but the truth is that the character has a long tradition in black African culture. Blacks in America were performing Jim Crow long before the character was appropriated by whites. The Myth Thomas Rice was born in the lower east side of Manhattan, New York. While traveling as a performer in the coastal South and the Ohio River valley, Rice had observed black song and dance over many years. While performing at Louisville, Kentucky, in the early 1830s he learned to mimic slaves while performing in blackface. One day, he noticed 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" and the lyrics were as follows: "�Weel about and turn about and do jis so, Eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow." Rice was fascinate...

Blackface! Blackface Origins in Clowning   Introduction The art of clowning has existed for thousands of years. A pygmy clown performed as a jester in the court of Pharaoh Dadkeri-Assi during Egypt's Fifth Dynasty about 2500 B.C. Court jesters have performed in China since 1818 B.C. Throughout history most cultures have had clowns. When Cortez conquered the Aztec Nation in 1520 A.D. he discovered Montezuma's court included jesters similar to those in Europe. Aztec fools, dwarf clowns, and hunchbacked buffoons were among the treasures Cortez took back to Pope Clement VII. Most Native American tribes had some type of clown character. These clowns played an important role in the social and religious life of the tribe, and in some cases were believed to be able to cure certain diseases. Court Jesters Clowns who performed as court jesters were given great freedom of speech. Often they were the only one to speak out against the ruler's ideas, and...

  Blackface History Prior to Minstrel Shows Centuries before the first American minstrel put on the burnt cork mask, blackface was a familiar theatrical device in Europe. The most famous blackface performance in the legitimate theater is Shakespeare's Othello, first produced in 1604 and almost always performed by a White actor in blackface until nearly the end of the 20th Century. Verdi's operatic version will no doubt continue to be sung by blackfaced Whites until opera develops enough strong Black tenors to take over the role. As theater historian Robert Hornback explains, Shakespeare did not invent theatrical blackface, but was consciously using a convention with a very long tradition and some very specific implications for his audience. From the folk rituals of pagan Europe through Medieval religious pageants to the theater of Shakespeare's day, a black face and black skin were used to denote both evil and folly. ...

    Cover of Monarchs of Minstrelsy (1911) by Edward Le Roy Rice Excerpts from Monarchs of Minstrelsy (1911) by Edward Le Roy Rice (1871-1940)    The First Black-Face Performer The late Laurence Hutton in "The Negro on the Stage," states that Shakespeare's Othello was one of the earliest black-face stage characters; giving the date of the appearance at the Globe Theatre, London, England, on April 30, 1610; Oronoko followed in 1696. But several hundred years before the jealous Moor's appearance, a couple of young men, named Cain and Abel respectively, did a brother act, though not necessarily a brotherly act, for the first-named gentleman one day in a fit of peevishness did smite Master Abel with such force that the breath did leave his body ; Cain was punished, as he should have been ; his complexion was changed from Caucasian to Ethiopian; this was the first black face turn. Anyway, tha...