What is a minstrel show?

America’s first original musical theater genre, the minstrel show, was born nearly 200 years ago. Although its existence is embarrassing to us today, for more than 40 years, it was one of the most popular forms of entertainment in America and around the world. Indeed, for the first time in history, the minstrel show spawned European imitation of Americans, instead of the other way around. In the post-bellum minstrel show, thousands of African-Americans had a lucrative vehicle for their singing, dancing, songwriting, and comedy. The minstrel show is also the ultimate source of all truly American music, from ragtime to rock ’n’ roll, and the precursor of modern American musical theater.

The immediate ancestor of the minstrel show, the Jim Crow Act, began nearly 200 years ago. Its original location has been variously ascribed to Charleston, South Carolina; Louisville, Kentucky; and Baltimore, Maryland. Thomas Dartmouth Rice ("Daddy" Rice, 1808−1860) was America’s first renowned "Ethiopian delineator." He danced, played several musical instruments, sang, and told amusing stories, and wherever he performed, Rice filled the theater to capacity. A chance encounter in 1828 with an African-American stable hand led Rice to discover the song "Jump Jim Crow." Rice couldn’t forget the song and created numerous verses to go with the chorus he’d heard. In his dressing room at the theater, he burned the cork from his wine bottle and blackened his face with it. Later, when Rice performed his act at New York’s Bowery Theatre, he played to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 3,500 people. Soon, Rice was the most in-demand entertainer in America. Of course, imitators sprang up, and in time, Rice had to put a banner outside his theaters that read, "The Original Jim Crow."

The new American dances of the 19th century had largely come from the slaves on Southern plantations. One of the plantation dances, the cakewalk, later became a permanent part of the minstrel show and, by the 1880s, dethroned the waltz as the favorite dance of youthful Americans.