Note (return) — Chapter X

Rice, who was a clever and versatile performer, caught the air, made up like the Negro, and in the course of the next season introduced Jim Crow and his step to the stage, and so successful was he in his performance that on his first night in the part he was encored twenty times.152 Rice had many imitators among the white comedians of the country, some of whom indeed claimed priority in opening up the new field, and along with their burlesque these men actually touched upon the possibilities of plaintive Negro melodies, which they of course capitalized. In New York late in 1842 four men—"Dan" Emmett, Frank Brower, "Billy" Whitlock, and "Dick" Pelham—practiced together with fiddle and banjo, "bones" and tambourine, and thus was born the first company, the "Virginia Minstrels," which made its formal debut in New York February 17, 1843. Its members produced in connection with their work all sorts of popular songs, one of Emmett's being "Dixie," which, introduced by Mrs. John Wood in a burlesque in New Orleans at the outbreak of the Civil War, leaped into popularity and became the war-song of the Confederacy. Companies multipled apace. "Christy's Minstrels" claimed priority to the company already mentioned, but did not actually enter upon its New York career until 1846. "Bryant's Minstrels" and Buckley's "New Orleans Serenaders" were only two others of the most popular aggregations featuring and burlesquing the Negro. In a social history of the Negro in America, however, it is important to observe in passing that already, even in burlesque, the Negro element was beginning to enthrall the popular mind. About the same time as minstrelsy also developed the habit of belittling the race by making the name of some prominent and worthy Negro a term of contempt; thus "cuffy" (corrupted from Paul Cuffe) now came into widespread use.