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Thomas D. Rice




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His act included the song and dance " Jump Jim Crow " which would later give its name to " Jim Crow " Segregation laws in the southern United States . In the 1850s , he played the title role in one of the more prominent (and one of the least Abolitionist ) "Tom shows", loosely based on Harriet Beecher Stowe 's '' Uncle Tom's Cabin ''. (Lott, 1993, 211)

Rice's brand of entertainment would later be considered a form of Racism , although it also opened the door for black performers.

Rice's greatest prominence came in the 1830s , before the rise of full-blown blackface Minstrel Shows , when blackface performances were typically part of a Variety Show or as an Entr'acte in another play. Rice's playlet ''Oh Hush! or The Virginny Cupids'' was the most popular of the time. It is centered on a song " Coal Black Rose ", which predated the playlet. Rice played Cuff, boss of the bootblacks, and he wins the girl, Rose, away from the black Dandy Sambo Johnson, a former bootblack who made money by winning a Lottery . (Lott, 1993, 133)


References

  • http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Estates/1390/oldnews.htm

  • http://www.geometry.net/nobel/passy_frederic_page_no_2.php

  • Lott, Eric. ''Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0195078322.