Extra Credit Questions

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(07-23-2018 12:22 PM)Anita Wrote:  If I remember correctly (which I often don't these days) he was a white performer who performed in blackface. I am originally from NY and I remember reading about him. I did a minor in Theater.

Your memory is excellent, Anita. Thomas Dartmouth ("Daddy") Rice is considered by many to be the "Father of American Minstrelsy" and was both a performer and playwright. In the 1830s, he introduced a blackface character to the American stage when he created Jim Crow. It was wildly successful, and Rice traveled the country and England adapting the African American vernacular speech to Jim. Ironically, Rice (a New Yorker) and his minstrel character would go on to "contribute" that Jim Crow name to the series of laws in both North and South that spelled segregation for nearly a century. Rice died in 1860 before seeing the end of slavery and the inauguration of Jim Crow laws.