Editing Blackface (section)

=== 19th century ===
[[File:John McCullough as Othello.jpg|thumb|The white American actor [[John McCullough (actor)|John McCullough]] as Othello, 1878]]
[[Lewis Hallam Jr.|Lewis Hallam, Jr.]], a white blackface actor of [[Old American Company|American Company]] fame, brought blackface in this more specific sense to prominence as a theatrical device in the United States when playing the role of "Mungo", an inebriated black man in ''[[The Padlock]]'', a British play that premiered in New York City at the [[John Street Theatre]] on May 29, 1769.<ref>{{cite book|last= Tosches |first= Nick |title= Where Dead Voices Gather |publisher= Back Bay |year= 2002 |isbn= 978-0-316-89537-8 |page = 10}}</ref> The play attracted notice, and other performers adopted the style. From at least the 1810s, blackface [[clown]]s were popular in the United States.<ref>{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|p=68}}.</ref> British actor [[Charles Mathews]] toured the U.S. in 1822–23, and as a result added a "black" characterization to his repertoire of British regional types for his next show, ''A Trip to America'', which included Mathews singing "Possum up a Gum Tree", a popular slave freedom song.<ref name=gotham>[[Edwin G. Burrows|Burrows, Edwin G.]] & [[Mike Wallace (historian)|Wallace, Mike]]. ''[[Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898]]''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. p. 489.</ref> [[Edwin Forrest]] played a plantation black in 1823,<ref name=gotham /> and [[George Washington Dixon]] was already building his stage career around blackface in 1828,<ref>{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|p=74 ''et. seq.''}}</ref> but it was another white comic actor, [[Thomas D. Rice]], who truly popularized blackface. Rice introduced the song "[[Jump Jim Crow]]", accompanied by a dance, in his stage act in 1828,<ref>{{Harvnb|Lott|1993|p=211}}.</ref> and scored stardom with it by 1832.<ref>{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|p=67}}.</ref>

{{blockquote|First on de heel tap, den on the toe<br />Every time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.<br />I wheel about and turn about an do just so,<br />And every time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.<ref>Oakley, Giles (2nd Edition) The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues ({{ISBN|0306807432}})</ref>}}

Rice traveled the U.S., performing under the stage name "Daddy Jim Crow". The name ''Jim Crow'' later became attached to [[Jim Crow laws|statutes]] that codified the reinstitution of [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] and [[racial discrimination|discrimination]] after [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]].<ref>Ronald L. F. Davis, [http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm Creating Jim Crow] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070601223741/http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm |date=June 1, 2007 }}, ''The History of Jim Crow'' online, New York Life. Accessed January 31, 2008.</ref>

In the 1830s and early 1840s, blackface performances mixed skits with comic songs and vigorous dances. Initially, Rice and his peers performed only in relatively disreputable venues, but as blackface gained popularity they gained opportunities to perform as ''[[entr'acte]]s'' in theatrical venues of a higher class. Stereotyped blackface characters developed: buffoonish, lazy, superstitious, cowardly, and lascivious characters, who stole, lied pathologically, and mangled the English language. Early blackface minstrels were all male, so cross-dressing white men also played black women who were often portrayed as unappealingly and grotesquely mannish, in the matronly [[Mammy stereotype|mammy]] mold, or as highly sexually provocative. The 1830s American stage, where blackface first rose to prominence, featured similarly comic stereotypes of the clever Yankee and the larger-than-life Frontiersman;<ref>{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|p=27}}.</ref> the late 19th- and early 20th-century American and British stage where it last prospered<ref name="autogenerated1">{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|pp=130–31}}.</ref> featured many other, mostly [[Ethnic group|ethnically]]-based, comic stereotypes: conniving Jews;<ref>Jody Rosen (2006), album notes to ''Jewface'', Reboot Stereophonic CD RSR006</ref><ref name="Strausbaugh-131">{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|p=131}}.</ref> drunken brawling [[Ireland|Irishmen]] with [[wikt:blarney|blarney]];<ref name="Strausbaugh-131" /><ref>Michael C. O'Neill, [http://www.eoneill.com/library/laconics/1/1o.htm O'Neill's Ireland: Old Sod or Blarney Bog?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120418092410/http://www.eoneill.com/library/laconics/1/1o.htm |date=April 18, 2012 }}, ''Laconics'' (eOneill.com), 2006. Accessed online February 2, 2008.</ref><ref>[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19960102/ai_n9632177 Pat, Paddy and Teague] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016142610/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19960102/ai_n9632177 |date=October 16, 2015 }}, ''The Independent'' (London), January 2, 1996. Accessed online (at findarticles.com) February 2, 2008.</ref> oily Italians;<ref name="Strausbaugh-131" /> stodgy Germans;<ref name="Strausbaugh-131" /> and gullible rural people.<ref name="Strausbaugh-131" />

1830s and early 1840s blackface performers performed solo or as duos, with the occasional trio; the traveling troupes that would later characterize blackface minstrelsy arose only with the minstrel show.<ref>{{Harvnb|Toll|1974|p=30}}.</ref> In New York City in 1843, [[Dan Emmett]] and his [[Virginia Minstrels]] broke blackface minstrelsy loose from its novelty act and ''entr'acte'' status and performed the first full-blown minstrel show: an evening's entertainment composed entirely of blackface performance. ([[Edwin Pearce Christy|E. P. Christy]] did more or less the same, apparently independently, earlier the same year in [[Buffalo, New York]].)<ref>{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|pp=102–03}}</ref> Their loosely structured show with the musicians sitting in a semicircle, a [[tambourine]] player on one end and a [[bones (instrument)|bones]] player on the other, set the precedent for what would soon become the first act of a standard three-act minstrel show.<ref>{{Harvnb|Toll|1974|pp=51–52}}</ref> By 1852, the skits that had been part of blackface performance for decades expanded to one-act farces, often used as the show's third act.<ref>{{Harvnb|Toll|1974|pp=56–57}}</ref>

[[File:Carrie Swain as Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.jpg|thumb|Carrie Swain in blackface as Topsy in ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.]]
In the 1870s the actress [[Carrie Swain]] began performing in minstrel shows alongside her husband, the acrobat and blackface performer Sam Swain. It is possible that she was the first woman performer to appear in blackface.<ref>{{cite book|title=From "Barney's Courtship" to Burns and Allen: Male-female Comedy Teams in American Vaudeville, 1865-1932|first=Shirley Louise|last= Staples|year=1981|publisher=[[Tufts University Press]]|page=119}}</ref> Theatre scholar Shirley Staples stated, "Carrie Swain may have been the first woman to attempt the acrobatic comedy typical of male blackface work."<ref>{{cite book|title=Male-female Comedy Teams in American Vaudeville, 1865-1932|first=Shirley|last= Staples|year= 1984|publisher=[[UMI Research Press]]|isbn=9780835715201|page=58}}</ref> She later portrayed the blackface role of Topsy in a musical adaptation of [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]] [[anti-slavery]] novel ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' by composer [[Caryl Florio]] and dramatist H. Wayne Ellis. It premiered at the [[Chestnut Street Opera House]] in Philadelphia on May 22, 1882.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OVdShkzkX74C&q=American+Musical+Theatre:+A+Chronicle|title=American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle|first1=Gerald Martin|last1=Bordman|first2=Richard|last2= Norton|year=2010|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|isbn=9780199729708|page=72}}</ref>

The songs of [[Northern United States|Northern]] composer [[Stephen Foster]] figured prominently in blackface minstrel shows of the period. Though written in dialect and [[Political correctness|politically incorrect]] by modern standards, his later songs were free of the ridicule and blatantly racist caricatures that typified other songs of the genre. Foster's works treated [[Slavery in the United States|slaves]] and the [[Southern United States|South]] in general with sentimentality that appealed to audiences of the day.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Key |first1=Susan |title=Sound and Sentimentality: Nostalgia in the Songs of Stephen Foster |journal=American Music |date=1995 |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=145–166 |id={{Gale|A18253704}} {{ProQuest|1295933905}} |doi=10.2307/3052252 |jstor=3052252 }}</ref>
[[File:Man in blackface as minstrel LCCN2001703945 (cropped).tif|thumb|left|A man in blackface as minstrel, {{Circa|1890}}]]
White minstrel shows featured white performers pretending to be black people, playing their versions of 'black music' and speaking [[:wikt:ersatz|ersatz]] [[African-American English|black dialects]]. Minstrel shows dominated popular show business in the U.S. from that time through into the 1890s, also enjoying massive popularity in the UK and in other parts of Europe.<ref>{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|p=126}}.</ref> As the minstrel show went into decline, blackface returned to its novelty act roots and became part of [[vaudeville]].<ref name="autogenerated1" /> Blackface featured prominently in film at least into the 1930s, and the "aural blackface"<ref name="Strausbaugh-225">{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|p=225}}.</ref> of the ''[[Amos 'n' Andy]]'' radio show lasted into the 1950s.<ref name="Strausbaugh-225" /> Meanwhile, amateur blackface minstrel shows continued to be common at least into the 1950s.<ref>{{Harvnb|Strausbaugh|2007|pp=145–49}}.</ref> In the UK, one such blackface popular in the 1950s was Ricardo Warley from [[Alston, Cumbria]] who toured around the North of England with a monkey called Bilbo.<ref>Ransom, Harry. ''Minstrel Show Collection'', p. 149 (1959), UTA.</ref>

As a result, the genre played an important role in shaping perceptions of and prejudices about black people generally and African Americans in particular. Some social commentators have stated that blackface provided an outlet for white peoples' fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar, and a socially acceptable way of expressing their feelings and fears about race and control. Writes [[Eric Lott]] in ''Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class'': "The black mask offered a way to play with the collective fears of a degraded and threatening&nbsp;– and male&nbsp;– Other while at the same time maintaining some symbolic control over them."<ref>{{Harvnb|Lott|1993|p=25}}.</ref>

Blackface, at least initially, could also give voice to an oppositional dynamic that was prohibited by society. As early as 1832, [[Thomas D. Rice]] was singing: "An' I caution all white dandies not to come in my way, / For if dey insult me, dey'll in de gutter lay." It also on occasion equated lower-class white and lower-class black audiences; while parodying Shakespeare, Rice sang, "Aldough I'm a black man, de white is call'd my broder."<ref>{{cite book|last=Ashny|first=LeRoy|title=With Amusement for All|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|date=2006|pages=17–18}}</ref>